IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (music playing)
| | 00:04 | Hi! I am Bonnie Biafore and welcome
to Project 2013 Essential Training!
| | 00:09 | Microsoft Project is one of the
most widely used project scheduling and
| | 00:13 | management applications.
| | 00:15 | I'll show you how to get up to speed
with this powerful program, and how to
| | 00:19 | get the most out of it.
| | 00:20 | I'll explain how to set up project tasks
including work tasks, summary tasks,
| | 00:27 | milestones, and recurring tasks.
| | 00:31 | We'll explore the different types of
resources you use on projects, and how to
| | 00:35 | set up their cost and availability.
| | 00:38 | I'll demonstrate how you link tasks
together and assign resources to tasks to
| | 00:42 | build a realistic project schedule.
| | 00:44 | We'll examine other project features
that help you evaluate your schedule and
| | 00:49 | resource workloads to make sure you're
bringing a project in on time and within budget.
| | 00:54 | So there's no time to waste.
| | 00:56 | Let's get right into Project 2013 Essential Training.
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| What to know before you begin| 00:00 | Before we get started, there are two
things you need to know about this course.
| | 00:04 | First, there are three different editions of Project 2013;
| | 00:09 | Project Standard, Project Professional,
and Project Pro for Office 365.
| | 00:14 | Here is the Microsoft web page that
compares these three editions so you can
| | 00:19 | see which edition make sense for you.
| | 00:21 | Project Professional and Project Pro for Office 365
both include all the desktop features that Project offers.
| | 00:28 | So I recommend using either one.
| | 00:31 | Second, this course covers how to use
Microsoft Project to manage projects.
| | 00:36 | It doesn't cover project management in detail.
| | 00:40 | If you're interested in learning
more about project management,
| | 00:43 | lynda.com has several courses on that subject.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | This title includes exercise files for you to download.
| | 00:04 | These exercise files include sample files
for the project showcased in this course.
| | 00:09 | You can download them on the
course page on the lynda.com library.
| | 00:14 | Inside the exercise files folder, you'll
find individual folders for each chapter.
| | 00:19 | When you open one of the chapters,
you'll see the individual files that will
| | 00:23 | allow you to follow along with each movie.
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1. Working with ProjectUsing the Ribbon| 00:00 | You're probably used to the Office Ribbon from working
with other Microsoft programs like Word, or Excel.
| | 00:06 | Project's Ribbon tabs are different from
those programs, but they make a lot of
| | 00:10 | sense because they focus on major aspects of projects;
| | 00:14 | project themselves, tasks, resources, and so on.
| | 00:19 | When you first open a project, it goes to the TASK tab.
| | 00:22 | But we're going to go to the FILE tab first
because it's the first one on the Ribbon.
| | 00:26 | Clicking the FILE tab takes you to
what's called the Backstage View.
| | 00:31 | Now it's called the Backstage I guess
basically because we're Project rock-stars,
| | 00:34 | but anyway, the Backstage View
has all sorts of file management
| | 00:39 | features, so, you can get information
about your current project, you can
| | 00:43 | create new ones, open them, save them,
print things about your project, share
| | 00:48 | them, set options, and so on.
| | 00:51 | Then when you are done, you want to
get back to the Ribbon itself, click the
| | 00:55 | back arrow and you go back to the TASK tab.
| | 00:57 | Well, the Task tab has all sorts of task related commands.
| | 01:00 | So you can do things like choose a task
related view, you can insert new tasks
| | 01:06 | over here in the INSERT section, get
information about a selected task, you can
| | 01:11 | link tasks in the Schedule section, and
one of my favorites, which is Scroll to
| | 01:17 | Task, which will actually scroll the time
scale so you can see the selected task.
| | 01:23 | The RESOURCE tab on the other hand,
is about resources.
| | 01:26 | So you can do things like add resources,
assign them to tasks.
| | 01:31 | And once they're assigned tasks, you
can level them to level their assignments
| | 01:36 | so they're not overworked.
| | 01:37 | The REPORT tab is new to Project 2013, and it
assembles everything about reports all in one place.
| | 01:45 | So you can get to the new graphical reports,
or you can run a visual report.
| | 01:50 | And within this, you can also customize
the reports that you choose.
| | 01:56 | The PROJECT tab relates to the overall project.
| | 01:59 | So for example, you can get project
information, set the start date or the
| | 02:04 | status date, that kind of thing.
| | 02:06 | You can also change the working time or set a baseline.
| | 02:12 | Now the VIEW tab is for settings for views in general.
| | 02:17 | So the first two sections let you
choose Task Views, or Resource Views.
| | 02:23 | But then you can do things like sort what's
in the view or apply a filter, or a group.
| | 02:28 | You can also change the time units that appear in
the timescale, or which panes that you see in the view.
| | 02:38 | The FORMAT tab has settings for
the view that you're looking at.
| | 02:41 | And you can tell that because
there is a label above the FORMAT tab.
| | 02:45 | In this case, it says GANTT CHART TOOLS,
so you know this FORMAT tab has tools
| | 02:50 | specifically for a Gantt Chart View.
| | 02:53 | If you apply a different view,
you'll see different settings.
| | 02:56 | Now there are some things you
can do with the Ribbon itself.
| | 03:00 | The Ribbon takes up a little bit
of space at the top of the screen.
| | 03:03 | So if you want to use that space to look
at your project, you can collapse the Ribbon.
| | 03:08 | Just right-click anywhere in the Ribbon,
and choose Collapse the Ribbon.
| | 03:12 | You can actually click this up-arrow
over on the right side as well.
| | 03:16 | And then all you see are the tab labels.
| | 03:19 | Well, if you click a label, then the
TASK tab appears, and when you click a
| | 03:25 | command, it disappears again.
| | 03:28 | If you want to see the Ribbon again,
just right-click, choose Collapse the
| | 03:32 | Ribbon to turn off the check mark,
and now it comes back.
| | 03:36 | The other thing the Ribbon does is
it will actually adjust what it shows
| | 03:40 | depending on the width of your window.
| | 03:41 | So to see how this works, look at
the Insert Section, and you can see that
| | 03:46 | there are buttons for inserting different types of tasks.
| | 03:48 | Well, if I make the window smaller,
you can see that the Insert section goes
| | 03:53 | down to a single button with a down-arrow.
| | 03:55 | If I click that down-arrow, now I can
see all the commands and I can pick one.
| | 04:01 | Then if I maximize the window again,
it goes back to its full width so you can
| | 04:06 | see all the commands the same time.
| | 04:08 | The Project Ribbon is organized to make
it easy to choose the commands you want.
| | 04:12 | It has lots of features to streamline your work.
| | 04:15 | If you're new to the Ribbon,
making the switch doesn't take long.
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| Navigating the Backstage view| 00:00 | The Backstage View has standard
features for managing files like New, Open,
| | 00:07 | Save, Save As, Print, and Close.
| | 00:09 | But you can do a lot more with it than that.
| | 00:12 | When you first launch project, you get
Recent Projects on the left side of the screen.
| | 00:17 | So if you want to open one, you can just click it.
| | 00:19 | But on the right side of the screen,
you see icons for creating new projects
| | 00:23 | in different ways, by creating a blank
project, or a new one from an Excel workbook.
| | 00:29 | If you don't see the project you want in
the Recent Projects list, you can click
| | 00:34 | Open Other Projects.
| | 00:35 | That will let you browse through projects
and even browse your entire computer
| | 00:40 | to find the files that you want to open.
| | 00:43 | So in the list of Recent Projects, if
you point at a project that you want,
| | 00:48 | you'll see that there's this pushpin on the right side.
| | 00:51 | Well, if you're working on a project for
months, you want that project to always
| | 00:56 | stay on this Recent Projects list.
| | 00:58 | So the way you do that is to click the Pushpin.
| | 01:01 | When it turns to vertical, that keeps it pinned
to the top of this Recent Projects list.
| | 01:07 | So if you want to open a project, just click
it in the list, and it opens to the TASK tab.
| | 01:13 | But we're going to go back to the
FILE tab because we want to see a few more
| | 01:16 | things about the backstage.
| | 01:19 | So when a project is open and you go to the Backstage
View, the first thing you see is the Info page.
| | 01:24 | That provides some information about
your project like the Start Date, and
| | 01:28 | Finish Date, things like that.
| | 01:31 | There's also a button for the Organizer.
| | 01:34 | The Organizer is a feature that
Project uses to store things like views,
| | 01:38 | reports, tables, all sorts of things
that you might customize in your project.
| | 01:44 | The New command takes you to the new page, and
that gives you a lot of options for creating new files.
| | 01:51 | You can do things like Open, Save, Save As.
| | 01:54 | There is also the Account Information,
and that tells you information about your
| | 01:59 | installation of Project, but also
the account that you use to sign in.
| | 02:03 | You can see that you can choose an Office Theme,
and your account will remember
| | 02:08 | that, and show it every time you go in.
| | 02:10 | If you didn't have a Microsoft account
when you installed your software,
| | 02:14 | that's part of the setup, you can also
set options for Project to tell it how
| | 02:19 | you want it to behave.
| | 02:20 | In this case, there are actually a
couple of options we're going to look at
| | 02:24 | for the Backstage View.
| | 02:25 | So when you click Options, the
Project Options dialog box opens.
| | 02:29 | In this case, I am going to go to the Advanced
category and then scroll down to Display.
| | 02:36 | You can see that the first setting in
the Display section is 'Show this number
| | 02:40 | of Recent Projects'.
| | 02:41 | It's set to 25 which is probably plenty.
| | 02:45 | But if you want it to be a shorter list,
you can change that number.
| | 02:48 | The other thing you might want to set
is to turn on this checkbox for 'Quickly
| | 02:52 | access this number of Recent
Projects', and let me show you why.
| | 02:59 | When I go back to the Backstage View,
now at the bottom of the command list on
| | 03:04 | left-hand side, you'll see up
to four of your recent projects.
| | 03:09 | And that's probably the fastest way to
reopen a project that you've worked on recently.
| | 03:14 | So that's the Backstage View.
| | 03:16 | You can set options or print views and
reports, just use the File Tab to get
| | 03:21 | there and start managing your files.
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| Finding commands| 00:00 | As you work with Project, you'll probably
find that you use some commands all the time.
| | 00:06 | You can add them to the Quick Access toolbar,
or to the Ribbon to make them easy to reach.
| | 00:11 | These changes show up no
matter what project file you open.
| | 00:15 | There's also a way to find out
where commands are on the Ribbon.
| | 00:18 | The Quick Access toolbar is up in the
upper left-hand corner of the window.
| | 00:23 | It's always available.
So it is a great place to put your favorite commands.
| | 00:28 | Out of the box, it has some perennial favorites;
things like Save, and Undo, and Redo.
| | 00:33 | But you can add your favorite tasks,
and that's really easy.
| | 00:37 | If you want to add commands like Link
Tasks or Scroll to Task, on a TASK tab,
| | 00:43 | just right-click the command you want,
in this case, Link the Selected Tasks,
| | 00:48 | and then choose Add to Quick Access toolbar.
| | 00:52 | And now, you can see the Link Tasks icon is there.
| | 00:55 | If I want to add Scroll to Task, I go
over, right-click that task, and click
| | 01:00 | Add to Quick Access toolbar, and now I can
see my icons up on the Quick Access toolbar.
| | 01:05 | Another option is to add commands
to a Custom tab or Group.
| | 01:09 | Well, to customize the Ribbon, just
right-click anywhere in the Ribbon, and
| | 01:14 | choose Customize the Ribbon.
| | 01:15 | Then you can add a new tab or a new group,
and add the commands that you want to it.
| | 01:21 | So for example, I am going to add a new tab.
| | 01:24 | Over on the right side of the Project
Options dialog box, I click New Tab.
| | 01:29 | You can see I get a new tab and a new group.
| | 01:32 | Well, the first thing you want
to do is you want to name these.
| | 01:35 | So I select the New Tab, and
then click the Rename button.
| | 01:41 | And I'll call it Mystuff, and
then I'm going to rename the group.
| | 01:48 | If you want to add a symbol, you can,
but I'm just going to give it a name which
| | 01:52 | is Task Faves and click OK.
| | 01:57 | Well, right now this tab is sort of in
the middle of all the project tabs, so I
| | 02:02 | want to move it down to the bottom.
| | 02:04 | So I select the name of the tab and then click
the down-arrow until it's at the bottom of the list.
| | 02:09 | Okay, so now we want to add a couple of commands.
| | 02:12 | I select the group, and I am just going to add
a few commands like Copy, and let's say Format Painter.
| | 02:20 | Well now when I click OK, you can
see that my new Custom Tab is there.
| | 02:26 | And if I click it, I've got that custom
group and I've got my two commands there.
| | 02:31 | So you can add as many commands as you want.
| | 02:34 | You can also do something to
find commands on the Ribbon.
| | 02:37 | So just right-click and choose Customize the Ribbon.
| | 02:42 | And what you want to do is in the
'Choose commands from' box, click the
| | 02:45 | down-arrow, and choose All Commands.
| | 02:48 | That will show every single command in Project.
| | 02:52 | So let's say the command that
I want to find is Arrange All.
| | 02:56 | So I can scroll down in the list until
I see the command and I just point at it.
| | 03:01 | And when I point at the command, a
tooltip comes up, and it shows the tab, the
| | 03:06 | section, the command name,
and even the VB command name.
| | 03:11 | Now if you don't know the command name,
you really just have to scroll through
| | 03:15 | the list until you find something that seems likely.
| | 03:18 | But if you can't seem to locate a
command no matter what you do, click the
| | 03:23 | down-arrow again, and then
choose Commands Not in the Ribbon.
| | 03:27 | These are commands that are just
not anywhere on the built-in Ribbon.
| | 03:31 | So if you find the command you want there,
you have to add it to a custom tab or a group.
| | 03:36 | So these are a few easy ways to get
to the commands you use all the time.
| | 03:41 | The Quick Access toolbar is ideal.
| | 03:44 | And you can also customize the ribbon tabs
and groups to add your favorite commands.
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2. Setting Up Project FilesCreating and saving projects| 00:00 | You can create a project file in
several ways, but in this video you'll see the
| | 00:04 | basic steps for creating a project from scratch.
| | 00:07 | You need to tell Project when your project starts.
| | 00:10 | And it's a good idea to specify a
few other settings while you're at it.
| | 00:14 | You don't want to lose the hard
work you've done on your Project file.
| | 00:18 | So 'save early, save often' are words to live by.
| | 00:21 | When you first launch Project you'll
see several options for creating a new
| | 00:25 | project on the right side of the screen.
| | 00:28 | In this case we're going to create a blank project
so you just click the blank project icon.
| | 00:33 | And Project creates a new blank file for you.
| | 00:35 | If it's the first one you've created
in this session it's called Project1.
| | 00:40 | Once you have the Ribbon visible the way
it is now, there is a great shortcut for
| | 00:44 | creating a new project and that's just
Ctrl+N. So when I press Ctrl+N, Project
| | 00:51 | creates another new blank project.
| | 00:53 | In this case it's called Project2.
| | 00:55 | Well, the first thing you want to tell
Project is some things about your file,
| | 01:00 | like the start date.
| | 01:01 | So to do that go to the Project tab
and click Project Information.
| | 01:05 | Then in the Start date box you
can type the date for your project.
| | 01:12 | The next box to look at is Schedule from.
| | 01:15 | It's set to Project Start date and
for the most part that's what you want.
| | 01:20 | What this means is that project will
actually schedule to start at the start
| | 01:25 | date and it will tell you when the project can finish.
| | 01:29 | The other option is Project Finish date.
| | 01:31 | Well, if somebody gives you a deadline
for your project, you might think you
| | 01:35 | would choose Project Finish date and
then put in the finish date that they want.
| | 01:40 | The problem with that is Microsoft
Project then schedules and works backwards
| | 01:45 | to figure out the start date, but
that means there is no wiggle room if
| | 01:50 | something goes wrong.
| | 01:51 | So it's much better to choose Project
Start date and let Project tell you when
| | 01:56 | the project can finish.
| | 01:57 | You can always try to shorten
the schedule if you need to.
| | 02:00 | The next box is the Calendar.
| | 02:02 | Initially it's set to Standard, which
is a built-in calendar that comes with
| | 02:06 | Project and it's set to have working
days Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
| | 02:12 | with an hour for lunch.
| | 02:13 | Later, we'll go through setting a
calendar to match your projects and
| | 02:17 | resources working times.
| | 02:19 | Once you've set those values click OK.
| | 02:22 | Because the project information is
really important, you can actually tell
| | 02:26 | Project to open that dialog box for
you every time you create a new file.
| | 02:30 | To do that go to the File tab and click Options.
| | 02:35 | Then go to the Advanced category and
the checkbox you want to turn on is in
| | 02:41 | this General section.
| | 02:42 | It's Prompt for project info for new projects.
| | 02:45 | Turn that on, you create a new project,
the project information dialog box automatically opens.
| | 02:52 | Well, at this point we want to
save our file with a new name.
| | 02:56 | So to do that go to the File tab, click Save.
| | 03:00 | Because it's a new project, even though
I clicked Save, the Save As page opens.
| | 03:06 | That's because we're going
to give this file a new name.
| | 03:09 | So basically go and tell Project
where you want to save the file.
| | 03:13 | In this case, Computer is already selected.
| | 03:16 | We're going to go to the Desktop.
| | 03:18 | We're going to open the Exercise folders.
| | 03:22 | Go to the folder for chapter 02.
| | 03:28 | I type a new name in the
File Name box and click Save.
| | 03:32 | Now I've got a new project and its
name shows up at the top of the window.
| | 03:36 | Now once you have a project saved,
there is a great shortcut for saving
| | 03:41 | any changes you make.
| | 03:43 | The shortest way to do it is just to
press Ctrl+S and it automatically will save.
| | 03:48 | But you can also go to the
File tab and click Save again.
| | 03:54 | Every time you create a Project file
tell Project a little bit about your
| | 03:58 | project before you save.
| | 04:00 | That way you can just jump right in
when you're ready to start working on your project.
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| Creating a project from a template| 00:00 | Using a template is the quickest way
to get started on a project, because a
| | 00:04 | template can include tasks, resources,
settings, and even values like task
| | 00:10 | durations and estimated work hours.
| | 00:13 | Better yet, you can get templates from Microsoft,
colleagues, online sources, or even create your own.
| | 00:19 | When you first launch Project you
can see some featured templates on the
| | 00:23 | right side of the screen.
| | 00:25 | If you see one that looks like
what you want, you can just click it.
| | 00:28 | But if you want to look for something specific,
go up to the Search box at the
| | 00:32 | top of the window and type in some keywords
like construction project.
| | 00:40 | Then click the magnifying glass.
| | 00:43 | Then you see the results of the search.
| | 00:45 | Now if you see a template that looks
like what you want, you can just click it.
| | 00:50 | You get a preview that shows you a
little bit of what it looks like, you can see
| | 00:54 | who created it, little description,
and there is a Start date box.
| | 00:59 | So you can actually put the
Start date for your project in.
| | 01:04 | Then when you click Create, Project
creates a new file from the template and you
| | 01:10 | can see just how much
information can be in a template.
| | 01:13 | Well, the next thing to do is to save the file.
| | 01:15 | So go to the File tab and click Save.
| | 01:19 | Now in this case because we're
actually saving a regular project file from a
| | 01:23 | template, the Save As screen opens.
| | 01:26 | So just tell Project where you want to save it.
| | 01:28 | We're going to save on the Computer
and in this case in a Templates folder
| | 01:33 | within the exercise files folder.
| | 01:36 | It's a good idea to give it a
name so you know what the file is.
| | 01:40 | So I am just going to add
template to the end of the file name.
| | 01:43 | But you can see that the Type is a Project file.
| | 01:46 | So we are not saving another template
we're saving an actual Project file and
| | 01:51 | then just click Save and now
you've got your Project file open.
| | 01:55 | Well, if you want to make templates easy
to get to, there is an option you can set.
| | 02:00 | To do that go to the File tab and
choose Options, and then go to the Save
| | 02:06 | category and here in the Save
templates section there is a box for Default
| | 02:10 | personal templates location.
| | 02:12 | So you can tell Project that this is
where you save your template files.
| | 02:18 | In this case we are going to go to
the Desktop and go to the exercise files
| | 02:23 | folder and we want to use this Templates folder.
| | 02:26 | So I select it and click OK.
| | 02:28 | Now let's see what this does.
| | 02:31 | When I click OK, now when I go back to
the File tab, and click New, there are
| | 02:37 | actually two headings, Featured and Personal.
| | 02:41 | So if I click Personal, now I actually see
the contents of my personal templates folder.
| | 02:47 | In this case I have one called Relocation.
| | 02:50 | Templates are a great way to
get a new project going fast.
| | 02:53 | From within Project you can search for
templates online and download them or
| | 02:58 | choose templates you've created
or gotten from colleagues.
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| Creating a project from an Excel workbook| 00:00 | Suppose you have a list of tasks in
Excel and get estimates of work or
| | 00:05 | duration from team members, you can pull that
information from Excel into a new Project file.
| | 00:11 | If you include headings in the worksheet
columns it's easy to map them to Project fields.
| | 00:16 | So here is an Excel workbook
with some information about tasks.
| | 00:20 | You can see that the first row has the headings.
| | 00:24 | So we've got WBS codes, task Names, and
Estimated_Duration and then the values.
| | 00:31 | The headings in this first row are helpful for
mapping the data in the Excel file to Project fields.
| | 00:39 | Now that we've looked at the Excel workbook
we're going to close it so we can import it into Project.
| | 00:50 | Now over in Project, click New, and in
this case click New from Excel workbook.
| | 00:59 | The Open dialog box appears.
| | 01:01 | So we have to tell Project where that Excel workbook is.
| | 01:04 | So in this case I go to Desktop, the exercise files folder,
and go to the folder for chapter 02.
| | 01:12 | There is nothing there, but don't worry.
| | 01:17 | You have to go down to the File type and
click the down arrow and tell it you're
| | 01:21 | looking for an Excel workbook.
| | 01:23 | Now as soon as you do that, then you see the file.
| | 01:26 | So just click its name and click Open.
| | 01:29 | Because it's an Excel workbook, the Import wizard opens.
| | 01:34 | It steps you through how to import that data into project.
| | 01:38 | So click Next to get started.
| | 01:39 | We're going to use a new map, so
leave that option selected. Click Next.
| | 01:45 | There are three options.
| | 01:47 | Now we're going to create a new project
so the option As a new project is perfect.
| | 01:52 | But if you wanted to append the
data to your active project, you could
| | 01:56 | select the second option.
| | 01:58 | In that case, all the information from
the Excel workbook gets appended to the
| | 02:02 | bottom of your task list.
| | 02:04 | You can even merge data into the active
project if you want, but we'll leave the
| | 02:09 | As a new project selected.
| | 02:12 | The next thing is to tell Project what
kind of information you're bringing in.
| | 02:16 | In this case it's just task list.
| | 02:18 | So we turn on the Tasks checkbox.
| | 02:21 | The Import includes headers checkbox
is already turned on and that's what we
| | 02:25 | want, because our workbook does have headers in it.
| | 02:28 | So just click Next.
| | 02:31 | Now this screen is where you tell Project
how to map the information from Excel into Project.
| | 02:38 | As you can see Project can be pretty smart.
| | 02:40 | It can recognize some of the fields.
| | 02:43 | So if they're the same name like
WBS and Name, they are already mapped.
| | 02:48 | But project doesn't have a field called Estimated_Duration.
| | 02:52 | So you have to tell it which field you want to map it to.
| | 02:55 | In this case just click the one that says
not mapped and we want to map to duration.
| | 03:01 | So I start to type Duration and as
soon as I see the field, we're all set.
| | 03:06 | Now one thing to look at is that there is
this Preview down at the bottom.
| | 03:10 | You can get an idea of how Project is going to map
that Excel information into Project fields.
| | 03:18 | So if it looks like what you want, then just click Finish.
| | 03:23 | Now you can see the information has been imported.
| | 03:26 | The task names are here, the durations are here,
and if I insert the column for WBS.
| | 03:32 | Those codes are there as well.
| | 03:36 | So now the values are in the file, you can just save it.
| | 03:47 | So I give it a name and you can see
the Save as type is Project.
| | 03:50 | So just click Save and now you have a Project file.
| | 03:55 | It's easy to use data in Excel to create a new Project file.
| | 03:59 | This is particularly helpful if you have team members
contributing who don't use Microsoft Project.
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| Setting up calendars| 00:00 | When people work affects when
tasks can start and how long they take.
| | 00:05 | A project calendar defines the working
and nonworking time for your entire project.
| | 00:10 | You can also set up additional calendars
to define other work schedules like
| | 00:14 | part-time, work shifts, ordifferent hours on different days.
| | 00:19 | The first thing to do to is to set up a project-wide calendar.
| | 00:23 | To do that on the Project tab click Change Working Time.
| | 00:27 | Now Project comes with a calendar called
Standard and it's set up Monday through
| | 00:32 | Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with an hour for lunch.
| | 00:36 | You can see that here on the right side of this dialog box.
| | 00:40 | You can also tell that Standard is the
Project Calendar, because it says so in
| | 00:45 | the For calendar box.
| | 00:47 | The Work Weeks tab has a default work week
and you can see what the hours are by clicking Details.
| | 00:53 | Here you can see it says Details for Default
so you know which Work Week you're looking at.
| | 01:00 | If I select Monday through Friday, you can actually see
in light text the 8 to 5 with an hour for lunch.
| | 01:06 | But for now we'll leave it the way it is and click OK.
| | 01:09 | Later, we'll step through setting up workweeks
and working and nonworking time in calendars.
| | 01:16 | The best approach with calendars is
to actually copy the Standard calendar.
| | 01:20 | That way you can keep the one that came
with Project and create one specific to
| | 01:25 | your project or your organization.
| | 01:27 | So to do that click Create New Calendar and give a name.
| | 01:33 | In this case we'll create one for the project
and you can see that the option
| | 01:38 | Make a copy of Standard is already selected
and that's just what you want. So click OK.
| | 01:44 | In this case we just looked at the Work Weeks,
we didn't make any changes, but
| | 01:48 | we'll click Yes to save that.
| | 01:50 | So now that we've created this Office Relo
calendar, we want to apply it to the project.
| | 01:55 | So close the Change Working Time
dialog box by clicking OK, and on the Project
| | 02:01 | tab go to Project Information and the
Project Information dialog box opens.
| | 02:07 | Now in the Calendar box, click the
down arrow, and you can choose the new
| | 02:12 | calendar Office Relo and click OK.
| | 02:16 | If I click Change Working Time and go back
to the Change Working Time dialog box.
| | 02:21 | Now you can see that the Office Relo
is the Project Calendar, because it says
| | 02:26 | Project Calendar in parentheses.
| | 02:28 | Later, we'll cover assigning calendars
to resources and tasks.
| | 02:32 | Calendars tell Project about your projects
and resources working and nonworking times.
| | 02:38 | They're one of the keys to keeping track
of how long tasks and your entire project will take.
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| Defining working and nonworking time| 00:00 | Once you've set up calendars for your
project in any special work schedules,
| | 00:04 | it's time to get into the specifics of identifying
working and nonworking days and times.
| | 00:10 | You also have to set a few Project Calendar
options so Project knows how to
| | 00:14 | convert durations to hours of work.
| | 00:16 | On the Project tab click Change Working Time.
| | 00:20 | In this case the calendar we want to
work on is already here, Office Relo, and
| | 00:25 | it's the Project Calendar.
| | 00:27 | Now one thing to look at before
we get started is this calendar.
| | 00:31 | You can see that working days are white cells
and the nonworking days are gray cells.
| | 00:38 | You can also see the cell you select, the working
times appear on the right side of the dialog box.
| | 00:44 | Well, the first thing to do
is to go to the Work Weeks tab.
| | 00:48 | Work Weeks are basically the schedules
that people follow week after week.
| | 00:53 | Now you can see here
there is a default Work Week.
| | 00:57 | The Start and Finish is set to NA
and that means it applies to all dates.
| | 01:02 | When I click Details, the Details for
Default shows up, so I know which Work
| | 01:07 | Week I'm working on.
| | 01:08 | In this case we're going to set Friday to a nonworking day.
| | 01:13 | So click that day and then choose the
option Set days to nonworking time and
| | 01:19 | that sets Friday to nonworking.
| | 01:22 | But to make up for that, we're going
to actually make Monday through Thursday
| | 01:25 | a little bit longer.
| | 01:26 | So I can drag over Monday through
Thursday and in this case choose the third
| | 01:33 | option, Set days to these specific working times.
| | 01:36 | Now when I do that, you can
see that the times are editable.
| | 01:41 | So what I am going to do is I am going
to lengthen the day, I am going to have
| | 01:46 | it finish at 6 p.m. and I can type 6
and if I go to another cell Project fills
| | 01:51 | in 6 p,m. because that's later
than the 1 p.m. in the From box.
| | 01:55 | If for some reason you wanted to delete a row,
just drag over the row and then press Delete.
| | 02:00 | But in this case the working times are fine.
So I just click OK.
| | 02:06 | This work week is set to 8 to 6 Monday
through Thursday with an hour for lunch.
| | 02:11 | So that's 36 work hours and that means
there is one other thing that we're going
| | 02:16 | to have to do and that's to the set some Calendar Options.
| | 02:19 | So click OK to close the Change Working Time dialog box.
| | 02:23 | Then go to the File tab and click Options.
| | 02:27 | So we go to Schedule category and the
thing that we have to do is we have to
| | 02:33 | match the Hours per day, the
Hours per week and the Days per month.
| | 02:38 | That way Project knows how to
convert duration to work hours.
| | 02:41 | Well, in this case the Hours per day
is set to 8 and right now we've got work
| | 02:47 | days that go from 8 to 6 with an hour for lunch.
| | 02:49 | So that's nine hours.
| | 02:51 | Type that in the Hours per day box.
| | 02:54 | The Work Week is only 36 hours.
| | 02:56 | So we have to change that to 36 and
Days per month is an estimate of the number
| | 03:01 | of working days in each month.
| | 03:03 | So in this case we're
working Monday through Thursday.
| | 03:05 | So we'll change that to 16.
| | 03:07 | The Default start time box is for
tasks that don't have predecessors.
| | 03:12 | So basically that's fine, because it's set to the
beginning of our standard workday of 8 to 6.
| | 03:18 | But the Default end time isn't.
| | 03:20 | So we have to change that and we make that 6 p.m..
| | 03:27 | Now that the options are set, close the
Project Options dialog box by clicking OK.
| | 03:32 | Now you can actually set up additional work weeks.
| | 03:36 | So for example if you have an alternate schedule,
maybe different weeks in the summer.
| | 03:42 | To do that, go back to the Change
Working Time dialog box and in this case go to
| | 03:47 | the Work Weeks tab and click a blank cell.
| | 03:50 | We can type summer of 2014.
| | 03:55 | In this case, the work week only
applies for a specific date range.
| | 03:59 | So you we have put the Start and Finish in.
| | 04:01 | So we'll start in June of 2014 and
we'll finish at the end of August.
| | 04:11 | Basically, you set up the working
and nonworking times for that work week
| | 04:15 | just as we did before for the default
so you would click Details and make
| | 04:19 | whatever settings you want.
| | 04:20 | Now there is one other thing you can do
with calendars and that's to create exceptions.
| | 04:27 | Exceptions are usually nonworking times, so
things like for a project it might be holidays.
| | 04:33 | If it's a resource calendar, it could be somebody's vacation.
| | 04:37 | But you can actually have a special
work times in exceptions as well.
| | 04:42 | In this case we're going to
create a holiday for the 4th of July.
| | 04:47 | So I'll name it July 4th and I have to go
in and create the Start and Finish dates.
| | 04:54 | So in this case I am going to select
July 3rd as the Start, because we're going
| | 04:59 | to do a long weekend.
| | 05:01 | Then the Finish is Friday, July 4th.
| | 05:04 | When I click Details, you can see Project
automatically selects the nonworking
| | 05:10 | option, because most exceptions are nonworking.
| | 05:13 | So in this case it's perfectly fine.
| | 05:16 | However, you can actually
create exceptions for working times.
| | 05:20 | One of things you have to keep in mind
about exceptions, especially if they are
| | 05:24 | longer exceptions, is that everyday has to be the same.
| | 05:28 | It either has to be nonworking time
or it has to be the same working times.
| | 05:33 | So you could do that for factory maintenance
where no one works for two weeks
| | 05:39 | while the factory is closed.
| | 05:40 | In this case the Nonworking is fine.
| | 05:42 | So I click OK and we have an exception.
| | 05:45 | There is another type of
exception and that's one that recurs.
| | 05:49 | So let's say that there is a quarterly meeting.
| | 05:51 | I am going to name that and I'll give it a start date.
| | 06:02 | We'll choose January 6th, 2014 and in
this case when I click Details, we go to
| | 06:09 | the Recurrence pattern section.
| | 06:11 | In this case we're going to make
it a monthly meeting and you can
| | 06:14 | actually choose a specific day of the month
or you can say something like the first Friday.
| | 06:22 | It's a quarterly meeting so on this case
it's going to be every three months.
| | 06:27 | Now the Start date is already filled in,
but you can specify how many
| | 06:32 | occurrences or you can do an end date.
| | 06:35 | So for example in this case I'm going to
put in 12 occurrences and then click OK.
| | 06:41 | You can see that Project calculates the Finish date.
| | 06:46 | One of the other things to notice
is that nonstandard working times
| | 06:49 | actually show up in this calendar with kind
of a light shaded background and an underline.
| | 06:55 | So that's how you can tell days
that are set to nonstandard times.
| | 07:00 | But our calendar work is done.
| | 07:02 | So just click OK to close the
Change Working Time dialog box.
| | 07:06 | When you set up working and
nonworking days and times for your project and
| | 07:10 | resources, Project can calculate a
more accurate and realistic schedule.
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| Setting basic options| 00:00 | Project comes with dozens of options.
| | 00:03 | So you can tell it how you want it to behave.
| | 00:05 | Many of the default settings work for
most people but there are few that you
| | 00:09 | might want to change right away.
| | 00:11 | To set options go to FILE tab and
then click Options and the Project
| | 00:17 | Options dialog box opens.
| | 00:19 | We're going to start in the General
category and that's the one that comes up.
| | 00:23 | So the first thing to look at is Username and Initials.
| | 00:27 | That's usually set up when you install
Project, but if you don't have the right
| | 00:31 | User name and Initials you can type
them in there; that way they'll be with all
| | 00:35 | of your project files.
| | 00:36 | The other thing you can change is the Date format.
| | 00:39 | You can actually change this one as you
are working, depending on what you need.
| | 00:43 | If you want to see more of the date,
click the down arrow and you can choose
| | 00:48 | something that actually has the
time in it or even the day of the week.
| | 00:52 | Or if you want to be really terse you
can just show the month and the date
| | 00:57 | or even just the day.
| | 00:58 | So you come back into the Project
Option dialog box as often as you need to,
| | 01:04 | to change that Date format back and forth.
| | 01:06 | The next category to look at is Save.
| | 01:10 | So initially, Project saves to
the most current project format.
| | 01:15 | But if you work with a team that uses
an older version of Project, you can
| | 01:19 | always choose a different version and
then, the program will save all of your
| | 01:23 | files in that format, so you can
share them really easily with your team.
| | 01:27 | The other one is the Default File location.
| | 01:31 | This is where Project actually saves files and looks for files.
| | 01:35 | So when you open the open or save dialog
boxes, it will go to that folder initially.
| | 01:41 | So select the folder where you
want to keep your project files.
| | 01:44 | If you're a big fan of keyboard
shortcuts, you probably know that
| | 01:47 | Ctrl+plus(+)+O will actually open the
open dialog box directly, so you can
| | 01:53 | just open the file that you want.
| | 01:54 | On project out of the box Ctrl+O goes
to the open page of the backstage view.
| | 02:01 | So there are few extra clicks to get to an open file.
| | 02:05 | But you can change that, the secret is this checkbox.
| | 02:09 | Don't show the backstage when opening or saving files.
| | 02:12 | If you turn that checkbox on, then,
when you press Ctrl+Plus(+)+O the open
| | 02:19 | dialog box opens right away and you can
select the folder and file that you want.
| | 02:23 | The same thing is, if you press Ctrl+S on a
new file it opens the Save As dialog box.
| | 02:31 | Now another thing that Project 2013 does is
it tries to nudge you toward Cloud storage.
| | 02:37 | So when you go to open or save a file,
it automatically selects SkyDrive,
| | 02:42 | which is Cloud storage and
that might not be what you want.
| | 02:45 | So if you to save your files on your computer,
turn on the Save to Computer
| | 02:50 | by default checkbox and that way the open
and save will automatically go to computer.
| | 02:57 | The other thing you might want to consider is Auto save.
| | 03:01 | If you've lost data in the past and you
want Project to save your file for you
| | 03:06 | without you having to tell it to save,
turn on the Auto save every checkbox and
| | 03:12 | then, put in the number of minutes.
| | 03:14 | Well that's kind of a trade-off between
saving your data and being interrupted.
| | 03:20 | So typically you want to do something like 60 minutes;
that way every hour project will save your file for you.
| | 03:28 | And you can tell it if you want to save
just the active project or all open projects.
| | 03:33 | The Prompt before saving checkbox is
turned on and that's what you want, because
| | 03:37 | if you're working on what if scenarios
you might not want to save.
| | 03:41 | So by prompting Project will ask if you
want to save and you can say yes or no.
| | 03:47 | The last section to look at is the Trust Center.
| | 03:49 | When you go to the Trust Center
click Trust Center Settings and then go to
| | 03:56 | Legacy Formats well, initially the
Do not open/save file is the one that's
| | 04:01 | selected and that can be problematic.
| | 04:03 | Because that means if someone sends you
a file that they created in Project 2003
| | 04:07 | you're not going to be able to open it.
| | 04:10 | The other end of the spectrum,
Allow loading files... will let you open those files
| | 04:16 | or save those files in those formats
but there's a bit of a security risk.
| | 04:21 | So really the best one is to prompt and
that way if you try to open or save to
| | 04:27 | an older format or a different format,
Project will ask you if that's what you
| | 04:32 | want to do and you can say yes or no.
| | 04:34 | Then there's Privacy Options.
| | 04:36 | This last checkbox, Remove personal
information from file properties on save.
| | 04:43 | Well, what that does, if you turn that
on and then go to save a file, it'll
| | 04:48 | remove the author, the manager, the
company and the person who last saved the
| | 04:53 | file from the file properties.
| | 04:55 | So for example if you're saving a file
and planning on sending it to someone
| | 05:00 | just as an example, you really don't
want all that information in there, just
| | 05:04 | turn on that checkbox.
| | 05:05 | Well with all of the settings in place,
you can just click OK to close all the
| | 05:10 | dialog boxes and you're all set.
| | 05:12 | Setting Project Options to match how
you work can make your project sessions
| | 05:17 | faster and more effective.
| | 05:19 | You can change settings at any time
depending on what you're trying to do.
| | 05:23 | You'll discover many other options
throughout the rest of this course.
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|
|
3. Creating TasksUnderstanding manual and auto scheduling| 00:00 | Project has two task modes for scheduling tasks.
| | 00:04 | When you set the task mode to Auto
schedule, the program automatically
| | 00:08 | calculates when the task should
occur and how long it should take.
| | 00:13 | With Manually scheduled mode you can
fill in whatever task information you have,
| | 00:18 | set the tasks start and finish dates
and a few other nifty tricks.
| | 00:22 | In this schedule Identify Requirements and
Draft Budget are both auto scheduled tasks.
| | 00:28 | I can see that by the icon in the Task mode cell.
| | 00:32 | Well with Auto schedule tasks Project
uses the task durations and the link
| | 00:38 | between the tasks to figure out the start and finish dates.
| | 00:42 | So for example, the 25 days determines
the finish date, based on the start date
| | 00:48 | for identify requirements.
| | 00:50 | And then, because of the link, Draft
Budget has a start date right after the
| | 00:54 | finish of Identify Requirements and
its duration determines its finish date.
| | 01:00 | In addition, if a change the duration of
Identify Requirements, let's say to 20
| | 01:05 | days, you can see thar Project
recalculates the finish date for that task,
| | 01:11 | because of the new duration and it also
recalculates the dates for the next task,
| | 01:16 | Draft Budget because of the link.
| | 01:18 | With Auto Scheduled tasks Project
uses task values, the links, and resource
| | 01:24 | assignments to figure out those start and finish dates.
| | 01:27 | We'll explore how each of these components
affect scheduling throughout this course.
| | 01:32 | Now Manually Scheduled tasks are kind
of like do-it-yourself scheduling, but
| | 01:36 | they actually come in handy for several reasons.
| | 01:40 | The first one is if you don't have all
the information you need about a task.
| | 01:44 | So let's say, you have a new task, review
requirements with management, and
| | 01:48 | literally that's all you know.
| | 01:50 | Well in that case, we can insert
a Manually Scheduled task.
| | 01:54 | So I'm going to click ID 5 because I
want the new task to come in above that
| | 02:00 | and then I go and I insert a new task
and I can just type the name of the task,
| | 02:11 | when I press the Down arrow,
you can see a couple of things.
| | 02:14 | First of all the Task mode cell
has a pushpin with a question mark.
| | 02:18 | Well, the pushpin says it's manually
scheduled and the question mark says,
| | 02:23 | that there's more information you are going
to have to fill in before this task is done.
| | 02:28 | And you can see that the Duration,
Start and Finish are all empty.
| | 02:32 | Well let's say, you have to talk to your manager
about when this meeting is going to happen.
| | 02:37 | So you can type yourself a note.
Just put it in the Start field.
| | 02:46 | So now the note is there and you can
remind yourself what you have to do.
| | 02:50 | Well let's say, some time has passed
and your manager gets back to you and says
| | 02:55 | that the meeting is going to be September 5.
| | 02:57 | Well, you can go back to the Start cell,
type in September 5 and you can see that
| | 03:04 | a cap appears in the timescale to say
that well, at least you have a start date,
| | 03:09 | but that's still all you have.
| | 03:10 | With Manually Scheduled tasks you can
actually pin both dates to the calendar.
| | 03:15 | So for example, if you have things
like scheduled meetings or maybe training
| | 03:20 | classes that have specific dates, you can
type both dates in the Start and Finish field.
| | 03:26 | So let's say, this meeting is going
to be a two-day meeting, so we'll type
| | 03:31 | September 6 into the Finish cell.
| | 03:34 | Well now, a couple of things happen.
| | 03:37 | First of all because there's a Start and
Finish date, Project knows how long the
| | 03:41 | task is, so it fills in the duration of two days.
| | 03:45 | You can also see that the taskbar has
two end caps because you've got both dates
| | 03:51 | and the question mark is gone from the
pushpin because now you've provided all
| | 03:55 | the information you have to;
| | 03:57 | there's a third reason you might
want to use Manually Scheduled tasks and
| | 04:01 | that's if you're fairly new to scheduling
and you just don't have time to
| | 04:05 | master all of Project's other scheduling features,
you can just come in create
| | 04:10 | a quick task list, fill in a few estimated dates
and you've got a schedule you can work with.
| | 04:17 | Auto Scheduled task simplify your work
as a project manager because Project
| | 04:22 | handles calculating when tasks should occur.
| | 04:24 | But Manually Scheduled tasks are
great, when you don't have complete task
| | 04:28 | information yet, you want to set
specific task dates, or you just want to blast
| | 04:33 | out a quick and dirty schedule.
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| Creating a manual task| 00:00 | Creating a Manually Scheduled
task is fairly straightforward.
| | 00:04 | Set the Task mode to Manually Scheduled,
name the task and fill in the information you have.
| | 00:10 | Task bars for Manually Scheduled tasks
change their appearance to indicate which
| | 00:15 | values you've entered.
| | 00:16 | In this project, it's set up so that
new tasks are set as manually scheduled.
| | 00:21 | So all we have to do is create a new task.
| | 00:25 | In this case, I'm going to name it Pack office.
| | 00:28 | Now you can see I've got a Task
mode indicator with a pushpin so it's
| | 00:32 | manually scheduled and the question
mark says, there is information that you
| | 00:36 | still have to fill in.
| | 00:38 | Let's say, it starts on July 15, so I
type that date in and now you can see the
| | 00:44 | end cap is in the timescale.
| | 00:46 | Well let's say your colleague Marco is
going to estimate the duration so you can
| | 00:51 | write yourself a note, put that in the Duration field.
| | 00:57 | Well, the taskbar doesn't change,
because you've just written yourself a note.
| | 01:02 | But few days later when Marco gets back
to you and says, that it's going to be
| | 01:06 | two weeks, you can go and select the
Duration cell, type in the two weeks and now
| | 01:12 | you've got a two week long taskbar in the timescale.
| | 01:15 | You can also see that it shows a dark cap the
end because you got a Start and a Finish date.
| | 01:22 | By giving the task a Start date and a Duration,
Project can figure out when it's going to finish.
| | 01:27 | One of the things because it is a
manually scheduled task, the taskbar is teal
| | 01:32 | if it were Auto Scheduled it would be a blue color.
| | 01:35 | The other thing is the question mark goes
away, because now you have all three fields.
| | 01:40 | Well there's another look for manually
scheduled tasks and that's when a task
| | 01:45 | has a duration but no dates.
| | 01:48 | So let's create another new task and
in this case I'm going to type 3d in the
| | 01:57 | Duration cell and that's for three days
and you can see there is a task bar and
| | 02:02 | it is three days long, but the ends are
kind of blurred out and that's the sign
| | 02:07 | that there are no dates assigned to this task.
| | 02:10 | What Project does to put it in the
timescale is basically, it starts it at the
| | 02:15 | Project start date so that's July 7th.
| | 02:18 | With manually scheduled tasks, you can
fill in partial or complete information.
| | 02:23 | It's easy to see whether you need to
provide more info for a task by looking at
| | 02:28 | the Task mode indicator and the taskbar.
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| Creating an autoscheduled task| 00:00 | Creating an Auto Scheduled task is simple.
| | 00:03 | You set the task mode if necessary,
name the task and fill in a few values.
| | 00:09 | So let's create a new task in this schedule.
| | 00:12 | Click a blank cell, type the task name, Move to new office.
| | 00:19 | Well let's set up as Manually Scheduled,
so I click the Task mode cell, click the
| | 00:24 | down arrow and choose Auto Scheduled.
| | 00:27 | You can see the easy indicator changes.
| | 00:29 | Now we've got a task bar in the timescale.
| | 00:32 | You might wonder how Project figures out
where to put the task in the timescale.
| | 00:36 | Well, this task is actually a sub task
under the walk-through and repair summary
| | 00:42 | task, so it uses the start date of the summary task.
| | 00:46 | You'll also notice that the Duration cell is
filled in with one day with a question mark.
| | 00:51 | Well that's Project's way of telling
you that it put an estimated duration and
| | 00:56 | you need to put in your estimate for
how long the task is going to take.
| | 01:01 | So just click the cell, type in your
estimated duration and press Enter and you
| | 01:07 | can see that the question mark goes away.
| | 01:09 | In addition, because we've changed it to
five days, the taskbar now shows 5 days.
| | 01:14 | If you are going to set up a project
that's auto scheduled, you don't have to
| | 01:18 | change every single task.
| | 01:20 | Just go down to the status bar and
click the NEW TASKS entry and then
| | 01:26 | choose Auto Scheduled;
| | 01:28 | that means all new tasks will come
in automatically as auto scheduled.
| | 01:33 | So for example, let's say I insert a
new task, I right-click this task, and
| | 01:39 | then, choose Insert Task on a shortcut menu.
| | 01:42 | Now you can see the new task comes in and
sure enough the Task mode is Auto Scheduled.
| | 01:48 | You'll see auto scheduled tasks
really shine after you link them with other
| | 01:53 | tasks and assign resources to them.
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| Switching between manual and automatic scheduling| 00:00 | A Project can have both Manually
Scheduled and Auto Scheduled tasks.
| | 00:05 | You can tell Project which mode you
want to use for new tasks at any time.
| | 00:10 | You can also switch the task mode for existing tasks.
| | 00:13 | To change the task mode for new tasks
on-the-fly, head down to the status bar.
| | 00:19 | You can see here, new tasks are
set up to be manually scheduled.
| | 00:22 | If I can click that and choose Auto Scheduled
and now new task will come Auto Scheduled.
| | 00:29 | So for example, I'll create a new task
and you can see that it has the Auto
| | 00:36 | Scheduled icon in the Task mode column.
| | 00:38 | Well there's another way to change this
setting for new tasks and that's in the
| | 00:42 | Project Options dialog box.
| | 00:44 | So go to the FILE tab and click Options
then go to the Schedule category.
| | 00:51 | We'll scroll down a little bit to
the scheduling options for this Project
| | 00:56 | section, you can see new tasks
created and its set to Auto Scheduled, which
| | 01:02 | is the same as what's in the status bar.
| | 01:05 | The advantage to changing the setting
here is that you can choose to apply it
| | 01:10 | only to the active project or to all new projects.
| | 01:14 | To do that click the down arrow in the heading.
| | 01:18 | In this case, if you choose the project
name its just the active project or you
| | 01:23 | choose All New Projects and it will set
new task to be created in that task mode
| | 01:28 | for every new project you create.
| | 01:32 | Now I'll click OK to close the Project Options dialog box.
| | 01:35 | Now the other thing you can do is you can
change the mode of a task once it exists.
| | 01:41 | In this view, we have the entry table
and it has the Task mode column.
| | 01:45 | But for the schedule table and the summary table
also have a Task mode column so
| | 01:50 | you can change it in any one of those
or you can insert the Task mode column in
| | 01:55 | any table you want, but to change the
mode just click the cell, click the down
| | 01:59 | arrow and choose the mode that you want.
| | 02:02 | So go ahead and set the mode that you typically use.
| | 02:06 | After that you can switch modes whenever
you need to for one task or all new tasks.
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| Creating a milestone task| 00:00 | A milestone is a great way to
show a key point in a project.
| | 00:04 | A chunk of work completed, a decision
made, or even better, a customer approval
| | 00:09 | the triggers a payment.
| | 00:11 | Milestones are incredibly easy to create in Project.
| | 00:14 | You can create as many as you want,
because they don't have any duration, they
| | 00:18 | won't affect your project schedule.
| | 00:19 | So to create a new milestone, select
where you want to put it in the schedule.
| | 00:24 | In this case, I want to put it
right above Choose new location.
| | 00:28 | So I click that cell and then on the TASK tab,
go to the Insert section and click Milestone.
| | 00:34 | The Project inserts a new milestone
and you can see the duration is set to 0 days,
| | 00:39 | you can see there is a diamond in the timescale
and that's the indication it's a milestone.
| | 00:45 | We're going to type a new
name, Requirements approved.
| | 00:48 | Well it doesn't have a date, so we want
to link this to the task that shows that
| | 00:56 | this milestone has been achieved.
| | 00:58 | Well, that's reviewing the requirements with management.
| | 01:01 | So in this case you select both and
then on the TASK tab in Schedule section,
| | 01:08 | click Link the Selected Tasks; and now
you can see that the milestone occurs
| | 01:14 | after the meeting with management.
| | 01:16 | Projects Milestone command makes
creating milestones quick and easy.
| | 01:20 | Create as many as you need to help track
the progress you've made on your project.
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| Creating a recurring task| 00:00 | A recurring task is work that
occurs on a regular schedule.
| | 00:04 | In Project you can set up a recurring
task by giving project the basic info
| | 00:09 | about the frequency and other settings.
| | 00:11 | The program then creates the individual
occurrences and a summary task to hold them all.
| | 00:16 | In this case, we're going to add a
recurring task right before the Design Space task.
| | 00:23 | So I scroll down and select the Design
space task and then on the Task tab
| | 00:29 | I click the bottom half of the
Task button in the Insert section.
| | 00:33 | On the dropdown menu choose Recurring Task.
| | 00:38 | The Recurring Task Information dialog box opens
and the first thing you do is name the task.
| | 00:44 | So let's say, it's a Project review.
| | 00:46 | You can see the Duration is set by default to one 1 day;
| | 00:50 | that's the duration of a single occurrence.
| | 00:53 | So in this case, it's a review meeting
so I'll change that to 2 hours.
| | 00:58 | The next section Recurrence pattern basically
tells Project when this task is going to reoccur.
| | 01:05 | Now one thing to keep in mind is that
you want to keep recurring tasks to a
| | 01:09 | minimum, and one of the reasons is it
makes it really hard for Project to level
| | 01:14 | resource assignments when you have recurring tasks.
| | 01:17 | So if you have something that recurs
really frequently, like on a daily basis,
| | 01:23 | instead of doing a recurring task
you might actually be better off just
| | 01:26 | including that time in your regular
work tasks, just add the time for those
| | 01:32 | daily reviews into the tasks for the work you do everyday.
| | 01:36 | But in this case, we're going to do a Monthly project review.
| | 01:39 | So it will be fine.
| | 01:40 | Well if you do a daily recurrence pattern,
you can tell it how many days you
| | 01:45 | want to do every say four days or if
you do Weekly, you can tell it which days
| | 01:51 | of the week may be a Monday and a Wednesday
and we'll do it every two weeks, or
| | 01:58 | for our monthly project review, choose the Monthly option.
| | 02:02 | And in that case you can tell it which
day of the month, such as the tenth, or you
| | 02:08 | can set it to be something like The Second Wednesday.
| | 02:12 | If you are going to do a quarterly meeting
you could actually change this to
| | 02:17 | every three months, but we're going to do this monthly.
So we'll leave it at 1.
| | 02:22 | Yearly is very similar to monthly.
| | 02:24 | Now the next section, Range of recurrence,
that's when it starts and when it finishes.
| | 02:29 | Well you can see it starts here at the
project start date, which is perfect, and
| | 02:35 | it actually ends by the project End date.
| | 02:38 | So in this case, I'll leave it just the way it is.
| | 02:41 | But the other option is you can choose
a different date if you want or you can
| | 02:46 | tell Project that you want a certain number of occurrences.
| | 02:50 | In that case you select the End after option
and tell it how many times you want it to happen.
| | 02:55 | So then I click OK and Project adds
all the individual occurrences, as well as
| | 03:02 | the summary task to hold them.
| | 03:03 | So you can see the individual occurrences
have day constraints because they're set for specific days.
| | 03:10 | You can also see that the summary task
has this indicator two arrows pointing at
| | 03:16 | each other and that means that's a recurring task.
| | 03:19 | And if you point at that indicator, it tells you how
many times it occurs and the start and finish.
| | 03:24 | Well, if you don't want to see rows
for all the subtasks you can click this
| | 03:28 | black triangle and collapse the summary task,
and over in the timescale, you can
| | 03:33 | see little tiny task bars for each
of the Project review occurrences.
| | 03:37 | If I click the white triangle to expand
the summary task, now I can see all the
| | 03:43 | individual occurrences; and over in
the Timescale, you can see them in the
| | 03:47 | summary task, and you can also see the
ones for the individual occurrences.
| | 03:52 | One thing to keep in mind is that the dates don't
change automatically if your project gets longer.
| | 03:57 | Well, let's say that the project was delayed.
| | 04:00 | Project is not going to automatically extend
this recurring task to include additional occurrences.
| | 04:07 | So you would have to create a new task
for the additional occurrences.
| | 04:10 | Creating a recurring task is an easy way
to set up several individual tasks that
| | 04:16 | recur on a regular schedule.
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| Copying tasks from another program| 00:00 | Many project team members use Outlook and Word.
| | 00:03 | So you probably get task information
from them in emails and Word documents.
| | 00:09 | Project and these Office programs play
well together, so you can easily copy and
| | 00:13 | paste task information into Project.
| | 00:15 | Well take a look at this task list
that's in Word; it's set up so that the
| | 00:20 | summary tasks are out-dented an they are in bold.
| | 00:23 | The work tasks are indented and
they are just in regular text.
| | 00:27 | There are couple of milestones
that have gray background shading.
| | 00:31 | Well, it's really easy to copy and
paste these from Word into Project.
| | 00:36 | To do that just select the tasks
and then on the Home tab in the
| | 00:42 | Clipboard section click Copy.
| | 00:43 | Well now these tasks are on the clipboard.
| | 00:46 | So we can switchover to Project and
I've got this project that I want to
| | 00:51 | copy these tasks into.
| | 00:52 | I click the first blank task cell.
| | 00:55 | Now on the Task tab, in its Clipboard
section, click Paste, and you can see the
| | 01:02 | task just flow into the blank cells in this project.
| | 01:06 | Sure enough the work tasks are indented,
they are in regular text and those
| | 01:10 | summary tasks are still in bold
and they are summary tasks.
| | 01:14 | So you can see we can click the black
triangle to collapse or the white triangle
| | 01:19 | to expand; and the milestones they
don't actually come over as milestones with
| | 01:25 | zero days because we didn't have any
duration in the task list, but they have
| | 01:29 | the gray background shading
so you know they're milestones.
| | 01:33 | Copying task information from other
Office programs like Office and Word is a
| | 01:37 | great way to get task info from team members.
| | 01:41 | They can use the programs they have and you
can copy and paste what they send into Project.
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| Creating a summary task| 00:00 | Summary tasks are great for
organizing work tasks for a project.
| | 00:05 | They can represent phases of work or
tasks performed by a particular group.
| | 00:10 | In Project you can create a summary
task for several existing tasks or create a
| | 00:15 | new summary task with its own new subtask.
| | 00:18 | Let's say you want to organize some existing work tasks.
| | 00:22 | For example, you can just drag over the
Task Name cells to select the tasks, like
| | 00:27 | these four, and then on the Task tab
in the Insert section click Summary.
| | 00:31 | You can see the Project adds a new
summary task and makes those four
| | 00:37 | selected tasks sub tasks.
| | 00:38 | Well this is ready for me to type a new task name.
| | 00:42 | So I'll type that name, Document requirements.
| | 00:48 | When I press Enter there is a black bracket
that shows the duration of all the subtasks.
| | 00:54 | That's one of the things about summary
tasks, the duration of the summary task
| | 00:58 | is the duration of the sequence of subtasks.
| | 01:01 | Well with the summary task, if I
wanted to collapse it, so I don't see the
| | 01:05 | subtasks, just click the black
triangle and the subtasks disappear.
| | 01:11 | If I want to see them again, click
the white triangle and they reappear.
| | 01:16 | Now if I change the duration of
Identify requirements let's say to 20 days, you
| | 01:22 | can see that the duration of the
summary task reduces to 41 days, because it
| | 01:27 | still reflects the duration of the sequence of subtasks.
| | 01:31 | Now you can also add manually scheduled summary tasks.
| | 01:36 | These come in really handy if somebody
tells you how long you have to get some
| | 01:40 | work done and you want to see whether
you have enough time to get it done.
| | 01:44 | So in this case, select these tasks
and insert a Summary Task.
| | 01:50 | I'll call this one Eval lease, and
initially the Duration for that summary task
| | 01:57 | is set to the sequence of subtasks,
but you can change the duration of this
| | 02:02 | manually scheduled summary task.
| | 02:04 | So let's say your manager gave you 45 days.
| | 02:08 | Type 45d in, you'll see a couple of things.
| | 02:12 | Well the black bracket shows the
amount of time that you've typed in the
| | 02:18 | Duration field, that's the 45 days.
| | 02:21 | But this teal bracket shows the duration
of the subtasks and what you can see is
| | 02:26 | there is a gap between the two and
that tells you, you actually have a little
| | 02:30 | bit more time than you need.
| | 02:32 | On the other hand, what if you got 35 days?
| | 02:35 | We'll type 35d in the cell.
| | 02:39 | Now the black bracket shows this 35
days but the other taskbar still shows the
| | 02:46 | duration of the subtasks 37.5 days, and
because that bar is longer than what you
| | 02:52 | got, it turns red to show you
that you don't have enough time.
| | 02:56 | You can also insert a brand-new summary task.
| | 02:59 | So let's say you have some new work
you need to add to the project.
| | 03:03 | In this case, I'll select the first blank cell
in the Task Name column and then
| | 03:08 | insert a summary task by clicking Summary.
| | 03:11 | Well you can see Project inserts a New
Summary Task and one new Subtask, but
| | 03:17 | it's all ready for me to type the task name.
| | 03:24 | So I type the name and press Enter and
it selects the Task Name cell for this
| | 03:29 | subtask, so I can just continue on and
type the name for that task, call this
| | 03:36 | one Get improvement estimates.
| | 03:39 | I press Enter again and it goes to the
next blank cell so now I can type a name
| | 03:45 | for the next subtask, maybe Identify other costs.
| | 03:51 | And basically I can just keep doing
that to add as many subtasks as I need for
| | 03:55 | this new summary task.
| | 03:57 | Summary Tasks make it manageable to
plan and track work you're doing and what
| | 04:01 | you've accomplished.
| | 04:03 | Project makes it easy to create
summary tasks to organize your work.
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| Displaying summary tasks| 00:00 | You'll often need to look at summary tasks in
order to see what's going on in your project.
| | 00:05 | Sometimes you may want to see certain levels of tasks.
| | 00:09 | For instance, you might want to see
just the lowest level tasks to assign
| | 00:13 | resources to work tasks or to check progress.
| | 00:16 | In Project you can display and hide
summary tasks or show summary tasks down to
| | 00:22 | a specific level of the task outline.
| | 00:24 | Well to hide or display summary tasks,
all you have to go in a Gantt chart view
| | 00:29 | is go to the Format tab.
| | 00:30 | And you can see in the Show/Hide section
that the Summary Tasks checkbox is
| | 00:34 | turned on, and you can see the summary tasks.
| | 00:37 | Well if you just want to see work tasks
turnoff checkbox and all the summary tasks go away.
| | 00:44 | So these are all the work tasks
that have resources assigned.
| | 00:47 | You'll want to see the Summary Tasks again,
turn the checkbox back on and the
| | 00:52 | summary tasks come back.
| | 00:53 | Well there's also the Project Summary
Task checkbox, so turn that one on, and
| | 00:59 | you see that a new row appears at the
top of the table and it has task ID 0,
| | 01:04 | that's a special task that shows the
information for the entire project and you
| | 01:10 | can see that it's got a Task Name for a
project and it shows the Duration of the
| | 01:16 | project and the Start and Finish date,
and if you display another table, you can
| | 01:20 | see other information.
| | 01:21 | So in this case I'll apply the Work table,
and you can see that the total work
| | 01:27 | hours for this project is 1856 hours.
| | 01:31 | You can also choose how many
levels of the outline you want to see.
| | 01:34 | So for example, let's say you are
going to do an executive meeting and you
| | 01:38 | really only want to show the first three levels.
| | 01:40 | To do that go to the View tab and click Outline
and choose Level 3 and now you
| | 01:47 | can see Summary Tasks there at the third level.
| | 01:51 | You can't see their subtasks,
because they are lower than Level 3.
| | 01:55 | If you want to go back to seeing all subtasks
click Outline again and choose All Subtasks.
| | 02:02 | Now the ones that were hidden come back.
| | 02:04 | If you want to collapse a Summary Task,
click the black triangle to the left
| | 02:08 | of its task name and it hides all the subtasks,
and you can see the triangle changes to white.
| | 02:15 | So then if you want to expand it
just click that white triangle and
| | 02:20 | everything below comes back.
| | 02:22 | Showing and hiding Summary Tasks
is something you do often,
| | 02:25 | and it's as easy as turning a checkbox on or off.
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| Organizing tasks in a task list| 00:00 | As you build and manage your project,
you'll probably end up reorganizing the
| | 00:04 | tasks in your task list.
| | 00:06 | You can change their outline levels,
move them to a different summary task
| | 00:11 | or delete tasks you don't need.
| | 00:13 | If you have similar work in different
portions of a project, you can copy tasks too.
| | 00:18 | Well changing the Outline level depends
really on where our task is in the outline.
| | 00:23 | For example, Identify costs is a summary task;
| | 00:27 | then it has a subtask, Identify additional costs.
| | 00:31 | Well if I select the Identify additional costs
and then on the TASK tab click
| | 00:37 | the Outdent Task button, it pushes that
task higher in the outline and you can
| | 00:44 | see now it's at the same level as
Identify costs, so Identify costs is no
| | 00:48 | longer a summary task.
| | 00:50 | If I decide that I want Identify costs
to be part of the Choose new location
| | 00:55 | summary task, I can then indent that one.
| | 00:59 | So I go up to the Task tab and click
the Indent Task button, and now Identify
| | 01:04 | costs is part of the Choose new location summary task.
| | 01:08 | You can also move tasks to another location in the project.
| | 01:12 | For example, let's look at the Prep phone system task.
| | 01:17 | It turns out, that really needs to be
down under Set up services.
| | 01:21 | Well the first thing I am going to do
is I'll click the white triangle so I can
| | 01:25 | see all of the subtasks and then I am
going to select the tasks, the summary
| | 01:29 | task and its sub tasks, and now you
can see that the pointer changes to a
| | 01:34 | four-headed arrow and that tells me I can
drag these tasks somewhere else in the project.
| | 01:40 | So that's what I do, I start to drag
down and you can see this horizontal
| | 01:44 | gray line tells me where Project is
going to drop these tasks when I let go
| | 01:49 | of the mouse button.
| | 01:50 | So once I get underneath the Set up services,
I let go of the mouse button
| | 01:55 | and the Prep phone system summary task and
its subtasks show up under Set up services.
| | 02:01 | You can also copy tasks from one
place in the project to another.
| | 02:05 | Let's go back up to the top, and in
this case I am going to click the Task Name cell
| | 02:11 | for Review requirements with management.
| | 02:14 | It turns out, because I just selected
the Task Name cell. If I go up to the
| | 02:19 | Clipboard and click Copy, all it's
going to copy is the Task Name, but that's
| | 02:24 | not what I want. I want to copy this entire task.
| | 02:27 | So to do that, I click the
Task ID cell and then click Copy.
| | 02:34 | Now I am going to go down to the very
bottom of the project. I click the Task
| | 02:39 | ID cell for the first blank row and in
the Clipboard section click Paste, and
| | 02:45 | sure enough, there is the copy of
the task and it has all of the values.
| | 02:49 | Well in this case it's no longer Review
requirements, so I am going to edit that
| | 02:54 | name, maybe it's reviewing the project.
| | 03:02 | So now I have a copied task with a new
name but it still has the other values
| | 03:07 | and I can change any of those if I want.
| | 03:09 | The other thing you can do is delete tasks.
| | 03:11 | Well if you have a regular task, not a
summary task, the easiest thing to do
| | 03:17 | is to click the Task ID cell and then press Delete
on the keyboard and the task goes away.
| | 03:24 | Well what about deleting a summary task?
| | 03:27 | If I click the ID cell for Post-Move,
which is a summary task, and then press the
| | 03:33 | Delete key, this dialog box pops up
and it asks me and it says, well do you
| | 03:38 | want to continue and delete Post-Move and its
subtasks or do you not want to delete any tasks.
| | 03:44 | Well all I want to delete is that summary task,
not its subtasks, so I'll click Cancel.
| | 03:51 | And the solution here is to move the
subtasks to the same level as Post-Move.
| | 03:57 | So I select them all, go back up
to the Task tab and click Outdent.
| | 04:03 | And now that they're all the same level Post-Move
is now a regular task not a summary task.
| | 04:09 | That means I can click the Task ID cell
and press the Delete key, but I want to
| | 04:15 | show you one other thing about delete.
| | 04:17 | Let me select the Task Name cell instead.
| | 04:20 | Now when I press the Delete key, you
can see that the Task Name goes away but
| | 04:24 | this X indicator shows up, and that
tells me I have a couple of options.
| | 04:29 | So I click the down arrow and I can see two options.
| | 04:33 | Well Delete the task name is selected because,
I mean that makes sense.
| | 04:37 | I selected the Task Name cell, so maybe I
want to delete the task name and type a new one.
| | 04:42 | But in this case I really want to Delete the task,
so I just select that option and the task goes way.
| | 04:49 | Project has plenty of tools for organizing your task list.
| | 04:52 | You can use them anytime you want during planning
or once the project gets underway.
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| Working with work breakdown structure (WBS) codes| 00:00 | A Work Breakdown Structure, also called a WBS,
is the Project management term
| | 00:06 | for a hierarchy of tasks.
| | 00:08 | By breaking tasks down in this way,
project work is easy to assign, track and manage.
| | 00:15 | To uniquely identify each task in
your project, you'll need WBS codes.
| | 00:20 | Well if you look at this view,
you'll see the Task ID column.
| | 00:25 | Well these numbers, the task IDs, are
not a WBS, because if you move tasks
| | 00:31 | around, those task IDs change and you
really want WBS codes, for the most part
| | 00:37 | you want them to stay the same.
| | 00:38 | So the easiest thing to do is to
insert a WBS field into a table.
| | 00:44 | So I right-click the Task Name heading
and choose Insert Column and then type WBS.
| | 00:52 | Click the WBS field and now the codes are in this table.
| | 00:58 | Well this shows you that Project actually has
a WBS numbering scheme behind the
| | 01:03 | scenes and it's just numbers at every level.
| | 01:06 | So Planning Move is at the top level,
so it has a number of 1 and you can
| | 01:11 | see down here Construct and set up
space has a number of 2, because it's
| | 01:15 | another top-level task.
| | 01:17 | On the other hand, Draft budget is actually
three levels down, so it has a code of 1.1.2.
| | 01:24 | Well if this numbering scheme works for you,
that's great, because you're done.
| | 01:29 | You don't have to do anything else with the WBS codes.
| | 01:33 | But you can also customize WBS codes
to fit what your organization uses.
| | 01:38 | To do that, on the Project tab,
click WBS and then choose Define Code.
| | 01:45 | Well this dialog box lets you define
the numbering scheme for your WBS codes.
| | 01:51 | The first box that you can fill in is the Project Code Prefix.
| | 01:55 | Basically that comes in handy if you're
going to have multiple projects in one
| | 01:59 | master project, and you need a prefix
to uniquely identify each project in this
| | 02:05 | big master project, even if all the
WBS codes in each project are the same.
| | 02:11 | So just to see how this works I'll type
in a prefix and we'll make it Ofc1 for
| | 02:17 | the office move and put a hyphen (-) as a separator.
| | 02:20 | Well now the next section is a Code mask
and that's where you really get into defining your scheme.
| | 02:26 | So the first thing you do is click the
first Sequence cell and click the down
| | 02:31 | arrow, and you have a couple of options.
| | 02:34 | The first one is Ordered Numbers and that
just means numbers that come in sequence.
| | 02:39 | You can also do Ordered Uppercase Letters,
which means uppercase A to Z,
| | 02:45 | or Lowercase ordered numbers so that's
lowercase a to z. Then the last one is
| | 02:51 | Characters (unordered).
| | 02:52 | That means you can mix numbers and letters,
but Project is not going to put them
| | 02:57 | into sequence, so you are
going to have to type those values.
| | 03:00 | Those are really good for abbreviating
phases, for example PLN for planning.
| | 03:05 | So at the top we're going to choose Characters (unordered).
| | 03:09 | Now the next thing is the Length.
| | 03:11 | Project fills in Any and that means
that level can be any length long.
| | 03:16 | But WBS codes should be on the short side,
so we'll this length to 3.
| | 03:23 | Now that means it can actually
go from one to three characters.
| | 03:28 | The separator is a Period (.)
| | 03:30 | and that's actually a pretty nice separator to use,
but you can also use a
| | 03:34 | Hyphen (-) a Plus (+) sign or a Slash (/) if
you want, but we'll stick with the Period (.).
| | 03:39 | Now in the second Sequence cell, we'll
choose Ordered Numbers, and we'll change
| | 03:44 | the Length to 3 again.
| | 03:46 | In this case, with this Length of 3,
Project will actually increment the numbers,
| | 03:52 | but it's going to go from one to the
maximum length you can get in
| | 03:57 | three, so it's to 1 to 999 and then
it would actually re-cycle again,
| | 04:02 | but 999 should be plenty.
| | 04:05 | The third level, we're going to choose
Uppercase Letters (ordered) and
| | 04:09 | we'll change the Length to 3 and
the last level we'll make Lowercase
| | 04:14 | (ordered) and we'll make that 2.
| | 04:16 | There are two checkboxes that you want to look at.
| | 04:20 | They are both turned on and that's really what you want.
| | 04:23 | The first one, Generate WBS code for new task;
| | 04:27 | that means if you add a task to your project,
Project will automatically assign a WBS code to it.
| | 04:34 | And since you want every task to have one of
these codes, you really want that checkbox on.
| | 04:40 | The second one is Verify uniqueness of new WBS codes.
| | 04:45 | Well you want the codes to be unique,
so what this will do is if you create a
| | 04:50 | new task with a new code, it will check
and make sure it's not a duplicate.
| | 04:55 | If it is a duplicate, it will warn you so you can fix it.
| | 04:58 | The other thing to notice up at the top
there is a Code preview, so you can
| | 05:02 | actually see what your code is going to look like.
| | 05:05 | And if it isn't what you want, then
just make the changes that you need.
| | 05:08 | So now we are ready to click OK.
| | 05:10 | When I do that, you can see that the new code mask
shows up in the WBS column.
| | 05:16 | Well because we used those unordered characters,
we just have to do one other thing
| | 05:21 | and that's to type some values in for those top levels.
| | 05:25 | So Planning Move is a top level task,
so click the WBS cell and I'll type Pln
| | 05:32 | for the planning phase, and when I press Enter
you can see that it fills in for
| | 05:37 | all the tasks that are in the planning phase.
| | 05:40 | The next one is Construct and set up space,
that's another top level task.
| | 05:44 | So in this one it's construction,
so I'll type Con and press Enter, and you can
| | 05:50 | see that Project substitutes the Con in all of those tasks.
| | 05:53 | Now let's say you end up assigning the
WBS codes, but then you do a lot of work
| | 05:59 | on your schedule and you move a lot of
tasks around and things get out of order.
| | 06:03 | Well if you haven't used the codes
for anything, for example like naming
| | 06:07 | documents that go with the tasks, you
can renumber the WBS codes in Project.
| | 06:13 | To do that, on the Project tab, click the WBS
down arrow and in this case, choose Renumber.
| | 06:21 | The Entire project option is selected
and so we can leave it that way.
| | 06:26 | If I had Selected tasks, then the other option
would be selected and you could
| | 06:30 | just renumber just those selected tasks.
| | 06:33 | But in this case we'll renumber the Entire project.
| | 06:36 | It asks you to confirm, so click Yes
and then it will go through and renumber everything.
| | 06:43 | WBS codes uniquely identify each task in your project.
| | 06:48 | Project comes with a basic numbering
scheme in place, but you can set up your
| | 06:52 | own to match what your organization uses.
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|
4. Linking and Timing TasksLinking tasks| 00:00 | Part of building a schedule is
putting tasks into the right order.
| | 00:04 | The start or finish of some tasks
trigger the start or finish of others.
| | 00:08 | In project management terms these relationships
are called task dependencies or links.
| | 00:15 | Well task links aren't about which
tasks comes first, it's really about which
| | 00:19 | task controls the other.
| | 00:22 | So for example, here are two tasks
and they are linked finish to start.
| | 00:27 | That means that the finish of
Design office space determines when
| | 00:31 | Prepare drawings starts.
| | 00:33 | So Design office space is the one that's
in control and it's called the predecessor.
| | 00:39 | Prepare drawings is the one that's being
controlled so it's called the successor.
| | 00:44 | Well if you are working on task links,
the best way to do that is with the
| | 00:49 | Task form in the Details pane.
| | 00:50 | So to do that, on the View tab,
over in the Split view section, turn on the
| | 00:56 | Details checkbox and Project automatically
displays the task form at the bottom of the window.
| | 01:02 | Well if all you're working on are links,
you can actually show predecessors and
| | 01:07 | successors in this form.
| | 01:09 | So just right-click and choose Predecessors &
Successors and now you have a table for both.
| | 01:17 | And you can see here, because I have
Design office space selected up in
| | 01:20 | the Gantt chart, that you can see the
Successor for that task in the Successor table.
| | 01:26 | And you can also see the Type is FS for Finish to Start.
| | 01:30 | Finish to Start links are by far
the most common type of link.
| | 01:34 | So if I go to the Task tab and then
select the Pack office task, you can see
| | 01:40 | that there is an icon for linking tasks.
| | 01:42 | That actually creates a Finish to Start dependency.
| | 01:46 | So if I select these two tasks, just drag
across their task name cells and click
| | 01:52 | the icon, you can see the Finish
to Start link just drops into place.
| | 01:57 | You can also see here, the Type is Finish to Start.
| | 02:01 | Well, there are actually three other types of links.
| | 02:04 | The next type is Start to Start.
| | 02:06 | Well, that means the start of one task
determines when another task starts.
| | 02:11 | For example, let's say we have an event,
so we have registration going on.
| | 02:16 | When registration starts,people start recording the
submitted registrations.
| | 02:22 | So those tasks are Start to Start.
| | 02:24 | So to do that I've got Start registration selected
and come down in this table,
| | 02:31 | choose Record submitted registrations.
| | 02:33 | But in this case in the Type field,
I choose SS for Start to Start.
| | 02:39 | Then when I click OK, you can see the
task links go from the start of one bar to
| | 02:46 | the start of the next.
| | 02:48 | The next type is Finish to Finish.
| | 02:50 | Well that means that the finish of one task
determines when another task finishes.
| | 02:55 | And in this case, we've got recording
submitted registrations and sending confirmations.
| | 03:01 | Well, once you've finished recording
submitted registrations, you don't have to
| | 03:05 | send any more confirmations,
so they both finish at the same time.
| | 03:09 | So in this case I select Record
submitted registrations, choose Send
| | 03:16 | registration confirmations in the Name cell,
and in this case I choose FF for Finish to Finish.
| | 03:26 | And when I click OK, you can see that the
link line goes from the Finish to Finish.
| | 03:30 | Well the fourth type is Start to Finish
and it's kind of confusing, so it's
| | 03:36 | really good that it doesn't happen very often.
| | 03:39 | And what this says is that the start of
one task controls the finish of another.
| | 03:44 | So it really puts the whole timing thing
completely opposite of what you expect.
| | 03:49 | So let's see an example of this one.
| | 03:51 | So we've got this moving truck and
there is stuff in it, so you want to make
| | 03:56 | sure that somebody is watching the truck,
so no one walks off with any of the contents.
| | 04:01 | Well, the first shift can't end until the second shift starts.
| | 04:06 | That means the people on the first shift have to stay
there until the people for the second shift show up.
| | 04:12 | Otherwise no one is watching the truck.
| | 04:14 | Well you create that link just like any other.
| | 04:17 | Select the first task, in the Successor name cell,
choose the Successor,
| | 04:26 | in this case choose SF for Start to Finish and click okay.
| | 04:32 | And now you can see that the first shift finishes
when the second shift starts.
| | 04:38 | You can also tell Project to automatically add
links when you insert, move and delete tasks.
| | 04:43 | So to do this go to the File tab, click Options.
| | 04:48 | Go to the Schedule category, we'll scroll down
to the Scheduling options for this project section.
| | 04:55 | And what you want to turn on is
Autolink inserted or moved tasks and click OK.
| | 05:02 | Well, here is what happens.
| | 05:06 | Let's look at Pack office and Load moving truck
and you can see there is a
| | 05:11 | Finish to Start between those two tasks.
| | 05:13 | Well, if I select Load moving truck
and then insert a task, I've got this new task
| | 05:19 | and you see Project automatically
took care of getting rid of the original
| | 05:24 | link and now linking all three tasks Finish to Start.
| | 05:28 | Depending on how you're trying to link tasks,
this can be really handy or not,
| | 05:34 | so just change the setting depending
on what you're trying to do.
| | 05:37 | After you get your Project tasks linked
with the right types of links,
| | 05:42 | your project schedule really begins to take shape.
| | 05:45 | Then you can fine tune links
with lag time or date constraints,
| | 05:49 | which are discussed later.
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| Adding lag or lead time| 00:00 | Sometimes linked tasks have delays
or overlaps between them.
| | 00:05 | Delays are common in Start to Start tasks,
when the Predecessor gets started and
| | 00:10 | then a little while later, the other task starts.
| | 00:14 | You can tell Project about delays or overlaps
by filling in a task links Lag field.
| | 00:19 | Well when you are working on task links
and lag, the best place to be is the
| | 00:23 | Task Form in the Details pane.
| | 00:25 | If you don't see that on the VIEW tab,
turn on the Details checkbox and Project
| | 00:33 | shows the Task Form at the bottom
of the window in the Details pane.
| | 00:37 | If you right-click the form, choose
Predecessors & Successors and that way you
| | 00:42 | have a table and can see both sides of the task link.
| | 00:46 | Well, in this example we have a task
Submit permit application, and let's say
| | 00:51 | that there is a 10 day delay to get approval
for the permit and you have to wait
| | 00:55 | that 10 days before you can start construction.
| | 00:58 | So in this case you want to have
a delay between these two tasks.
| | 01:02 | So to do that in the Successor name field
choose Start construction, you can
| | 01:09 | have it as Finish to Start
and in the Lag field type 10d for 10 days.
| | 01:17 | When I click OK, now you can see that
there is a 10 day delay after the Finish
| | 01:22 | of the first task, before the
milestone for start construction.
| | 01:27 | On the other hand, if you want
an overlap you use negative lag.
| | 01:31 | So let's say that you want to start loading the truck
before the office is completely packed.
| | 01:37 | So in this example, select the Pack office task
and we already have a Finish to
| | 01:42 | Start in place, but what we want
to do is overlap these two tasks.
| | 01:47 | so down in the Task Form click the Lag field
and type -1d (minus) to create a one-day overlap.
| | 01:56 | And when I click OK, now you can
see that they overlap by one day.
| | 02:00 | Well you can also put a percentage in a Lag cell.
| | 02:04 | And what that does, it'll create an overlap
based on the length of a task.
| | 02:10 | So instead of -1d I'll put -25%.
| | 02:17 | Well in this case, the Pack office task
is 10 days in duration, so 25% is a
| | 02:23 | two and a-half day overlap.
| | 02:25 | If I change the Duration to 8 days, then
the two tasks only overlap by two days.
| | 02:33 | It's a good idea to include delays or
overlaps in task dependencies as you
| | 02:37 | build your schedule.
| | 02:39 | With delays and overlaps in place, your
project schedule more accurately models
| | 02:44 | when work will occur.
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| Setting task date constraints| 00:00 | One of Project's important benefits is
its ability to calculate the schedule.
| | 00:05 | But sometimes tasks need to occur on specific dates
or have other kinds of date restrictions.
| | 00:12 | While manually scheduled tasks let you
set task's Start and Finish dates,
| | 00:17 | Date Constraints are another Project feature
that let you set task dates with degrees of flexibility,
| | 00:23 | like a task that can start no earlier
or later than a specific date.
| | 00:28 | The Task Details Form is the best
place to work on Date Constraints.
| | 00:31 | We can see in this view, the Task Form
is in the Details pane.
| | 00:36 | But it's easy to change that.
| | 00:38 | On the VIEW tab, go to Split View
section and click the down arrow in the
| | 00:43 | Details box, then choose More Views.
| | 00:47 | In the More Views dialog box, find Task
Details Form, select it and click Apply.
| | 00:54 | And now you can see that there is a box
for the Constraint type, and the Date.
| | 00:59 | Well actually this Constraint type
shows you something, which is that every
| | 01:03 | single task has a type of date constraint,
but in this case Pack office has the
| | 01:09 | most flexible kind, which is as soon as possible.
| | 01:13 | And what that means is that, when you
schedule a project from the Start date,
| | 01:18 | it will automatically Apply As Soon As
Possible to every task you create.
| | 01:23 | And that means it calculates the start date
based on predecessors, duration and
| | 01:29 | resource assignments, but the task
occurs as soon as it can possibly do that.
| | 01:34 | But let's look at other kinds of Constraints.
| | 01:36 | So we have Load moving truck.
| | 01:39 | Well suppose the moving company
tells you that it's busy until June 12.
| | 01:44 | So that means you can load the moving
truck anytime after June 12,
| | 01:51 | but you can't do it before that.
| | 01:53 | So the type of Constraint you
need is a Start No Earlier Than.
| | 01:57 | So in the Constraint box, click the down arrow
and choose Start No Earlier Than
| | 02:02 | and then you can put the date in the date box.
| | 02:05 | So this task can't start any earlier than June 12.
| | 02:11 | When I click OK, nothing changes in the timescale.
| | 02:15 | Well that's because, just based on
the duration of Pack office, Load moving
| | 02:20 | truck is scheduled to start on June 16th
and that's after the June 12th date.
| | 02:26 | But you can see there is an indicator in the
Indicator cell and that's for a date constraint.
| | 02:32 | So if you point at it, you can see
that there is a Start No Earlier Than
| | 02:36 | constraint and it's set for June 12th.
| | 02:38 | Start No Earlier Than is known as
a partially flexible constraint.
| | 02:43 | That means there is some restriction
on the date, but it can happen any time
| | 02:47 | after June 12th, so the date is
flexible as long as it's after June 12th.
| | 02:53 | On the other hand, if I change the
duration of Pack office to 5 days, now you
| | 02:59 | can see that the Load moving truck does
move earlier, but of course, it starts
| | 03:05 | on June 12th, not any earlier.
| | 03:07 | Date Constraints actually inhibit Project's ability
to calculate the schedule, at least to a certain extent.
| | 03:14 | So you don't want to have any more
Date Constraints than you should.
| | 03:19 | Unfortunately, you can introduce some
Date Constraints that you don't intend,
| | 03:24 | let me show you how that happens.
| | 03:26 | If I drag this task bar in the timescale,
you can see an indicator shows up and
| | 03:33 | that all of a sudden there is a new
Start No Earlier Than constraint set to June 5th.
| | 03:39 | Well that happened because
I manually dragged that taskbar.
| | 03:44 | So sometimes if you're trying to create links
or doing different things with
| | 03:48 | tasks in the timescale, you may inadvertently
move a taskbar, and then you have
| | 03:53 | a Date Constraints that you don't want.
| | 03:55 | The easiest way to look through your
schedule and just make sure that you only
| | 03:59 | have the Date Constraints you want is by filtering the list.
| | 04:04 | On the VIEW tab, click the down arrow in
the Filter box and then go to More Filters.
| | 04:13 | The filter you want is tasks with fixed dates.
| | 04:16 | So select that and click Apply, and now you can see
I only have the tasks that have Date Constraints.
| | 04:24 | So in this case I look through and say
well Pack office shouldn't have a Constraint.
| | 04:29 | So I can select that row, come down to
the Task Details Form and change it to
| | 04:35 | As Soon As Possible and everything is fixed.
| | 04:39 | Date Constraints are ideal if you need to restrict
task dates with different levels of flexibility.
| | 04:44 | Make sure your schedule has only the
Date Constraints you need, so Project can
| | 04:49 | do its job calculating the project schedule.
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| Viewing tasks and task links| 00:00 | After you link tasks, the timescale can get cluttered,
making it hard to see which tasks are linked.
| | 00:06 | Project offers a few features that
make your schedule easier to see.
| | 00:10 | But when you are first working on a
task list you may not want to see the
| | 00:14 | timescale at all, all you want is the names of the tasks
and a few pieces of data about each one.
| | 00:19 | Well in that case the Task Sheet is a great view.
| | 00:23 | On the View tab, click the down arrow
and choose More Views, then scroll down
| | 00:29 | until you see Task Sheet, select it and click Apply.
| | 00:33 | And you can see this view is just one
big table so it's got the task names in
| | 00:38 | the Task Name column, and then
other columns for other fields.
| | 00:42 | You can change the columns in the table,
so you can see different information about the task.
| | 00:48 | But most of the time you really want
to see this kind of information plus the
| | 00:51 | timescale, so that's where the Gantt Chart comes in.
| | 00:55 | You have got the table on the left and
then a visual look at the schedule on the
| | 00:59 | right in the timescale.
| | 01:01 | You can drag the vertical divider to
the right so you can see more of thetable,
| | 01:05 | or drag to the left if you want to see
less of the table and more of the timescale.
| | 01:10 | Now depending on your Task Durations
and just how much of the project you want
| | 01:14 | to see, you can change the time units in the timescale.
| | 01:18 | So on the View tab in the Zoom section,
go to the Timescale box, and if you
| | 01:23 | want to compress the schedule, choose
something like Months and you can see the
| | 01:27 | task bars get very short,
and you can see more of a date range.
| | 01:32 | On the other hand if you want to really to zoom in
you can choose Days and
| | 01:36 | the Task bars get really wide, and you can just
really see a lot of detail about what's going on.
| | 01:43 | In this case, I'll go back to Weeks.
| | 01:45 | You can also use the Zoom slider to
change time units, but it's not as accurate
| | 01:50 | as choosing a unit in the Timescale box.
| | 01:53 | Down at the bottom right just drag
the Zoom slider to the right to zoom in,
| | 01:59 | drag to the left to zoom out, and if you
want to move things little you can always
| | 02:04 | move the Horizontal scrollbar down at the bottom
to reposition the Date Range in the Timescale.
| | 02:11 | Then to look at specific information
about Tasks you normally show the task form.
| | 02:17 | Turn on the Details checkbox, and the
Task Form shows up at the bottom of the
| | 02:21 | window in the Details pane.
| | 02:23 | Well the great thing with this is,
if I select Task up at a top in the Gantt
| | 02:27 | Chart, then I can see the Details about
that task at the bottom, and if I choose
| | 02:32 | a different task, information about
that task appears in the Task Form.
| | 02:36 | On the other hand, to go the other direction
and get a high-level view of the project,
| | 02:40 | turn on the Timeline checkbox.
| | 02:44 | That shows up at the top of the window
and it's just a great way to get an
| | 02:48 | overview of the project, because you see
the whole thing in the one simple view,
| | 02:53 | from the start on left, all the way to the finish on the right.
| | 02:58 | You can add Task bars to it to show phases,
you can add callouts to flag key events.
| | 03:04 | It's really a great way to show things
to the executive team or to your team members.
| | 03:11 | The video on the timeline describes
how to work with this view.
| | 03:14 | Let's turn that back off
and let's just focus on the schedule.
| | 03:18 | Well if you need to home in on task links
there is a new feature in Project 2013
| | 03:24 | that's great for that.
| | 03:25 | So to do that go to the Format tab, and the
first thing to do is turn off Summary Tasks.
| | 03:32 | So over in the Show/Hide section turn off
the Summary Task checkbox, and that
| | 03:37 | way you just see the work tasks in your project.
| | 03:40 | Well, we're going to look at the Design office
space task, and we want to see
| | 03:44 | which tasks are predecessors and successors,
but we really want to see what's
| | 03:50 | controlling when this task occurs,
and that's where the Task Path feature comes in.
| | 03:56 | So up on the Format tab, click Task Path
and in this case I'm going to turn on
| | 04:02 | Driving Predecessors, those are the
predecessors that directly control when this
| | 04:07 | task occurs, and you can see a
few of the task bars turn orange.
| | 04:12 | Well if I click again and choose Predecessors,
other task bars turn yellow.
| | 04:19 | Now I can see well these yellow tasks
are predecessors, but they don't directly
| | 04:26 | control Design office spaces' Start Date,
the ones in orange do.
| | 04:31 | You can also look at Successors.
| | 04:34 | I'll turn on Successors, and also Driven Successors,
and in this case the darker purple
| | 04:41 | shows that these tasks are directly
controlled by the finish date of the
| | 04:46 | Design office space task.
| | 04:47 | There's a lot to look at in a Project schedule,
the right views and different
| | 04:52 | types of formatting can help you
hone in on the information you need.
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|
5. Creating ResourcesUnderstanding resources| 00:00 | Projects need resources like people and equipment.
| | 00:03 | The availability and cost of resources like
these affect the Project schedule and cost.
| | 00:09 | But you also might spend money on
things like materials, travel or training.
| | 00:14 | Project has several resource types to represent
the resources you use in your projects.
| | 00:19 | Depending on the type of resource
you will fill in different fields.
| | 00:22 | The best place to look at
resources is to the Resource Sheet.
| | 00:26 | So on the View tab, click Resource Sheet.
| | 00:29 | I can see this Project has several
resources already in place.
| | 00:34 | So let's look at the different types
of resources you can use in a Project.
| | 00:37 | The first list of resources is Work resources
and those are resources you assign by time.
| | 00:44 | So for example people who you assign by
the hour or the day, and Equipment like
| | 00:49 | this dumpster that maybe you rent for
a day or a week. How much time
| | 00:54 | resources have available and their work
schedules will determine how long tasks take.
| | 00:59 | In addition, their cost will affect
the labor cost for your Project.
| | 01:03 | The next type is a material resource
and we have a few here.
| | 01:06 | The thing about material resources
is you don't assign it by time instead
| | 01:12 | you assigned them by quantity.
| | 01:13 | For example you assign a number of boxes
for packing up the office, because time
| | 01:18 | isn't involved, material resources are
a little bit simpler to set up, because
| | 01:22 | basically you just put in a cost per unit.
| | 01:25 | Then when you assign the material or
resources, you just put in the quantity.
| | 01:29 | The third type is a Cost resource
and by process some elimination if you
| | 01:34 | don't assign by time and you don't assign by quantity,
then you're going to use cost resource.
| | 01:41 | So it's things like lodging, airfare, permits,
fees, tuition that sort of thing.
| | 01:47 | If you noticed, there is no cost involved
in the Resource Sheet and that means
| | 01:52 | you actually apply the cost when
you assign the cost resource.
| | 01:55 | The interesting thing about that is
that that means that a cost resource can
| | 01:59 | vary every time you assign it, which
is really good because airfares will be
| | 02:03 | different, almost every time.
| | 02:05 | When you set up the resources you need
in Project and then assign them to tasks,
| | 02:09 | the program can calculate when
tasks occur, how long they will take and
| | 02:14 | how much they will cost.
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| Creating a work resource| 00:00 | In Project, a Work Resource is one you
assigned based on time, like a person who
| | 00:05 | works full time or half time or a
moving truck that you rent for five days.
| | 00:11 | When you create Work Resources, you provide basic
information, name, initials workgroup and so on.
| | 00:18 | You also specify how much resources
are available and when.
| | 00:22 | So Project can calculate the schedule.
| | 00:25 | If you set up the Resource's Cost fields,
the program can also calculate your costs.
| | 00:30 | So to look at work resources, go to the Resource Sheet,
on the View tab, click Resource Sheet
| | 00:35 | and here we have several work resources.
| | 00:39 | Your first choice is whether you want to create
generic resources or resources for specific people.
| | 00:45 | So for example you can create generic
resources like the ones here with the job
| | 00:51 | skill, the Relocation Project Manager,
Office manager, Telecom admin.
| | 00:56 | So let's say we are going to create
a new resource for a Network admin.
| | 01:01 | So you type the job skill in the Resource Name
field and press Enter and you can
| | 01:07 | see Project creates a work resource.
| | 01:08 | Well, these generic resources are really good
early on when you are staffing up the project.
| | 01:14 | You can put in the skill that you need,
you assigned projects so you see how
| | 01:19 | many of those resources you need and
then when you get the real people and you
| | 01:24 | have actual names, you can replace
the generic resources with the people
| | 01:28 | assigned to your project.
| | 01:30 | If you create resources for actual people
then you put their names in.
| | 01:35 | Usually you want to do last name first name
so it's easier to find them, unless the team is really small.
| | 01:41 | Press Enter and I've got another work resource.
| | 01:43 | Well, the next field is Initials and
you can see that Project takes the first
| | 01:48 | letter of the resource name and puts it in the Initials field.
| | 01:52 | Well that's not very useful, because
it doesn't tell you very much and it's
| | 01:56 | also going to lead to a lot of duplication,
so typically you will want to put in a few more initials.
| | 02:02 | For generic resource you can just
abbreviate the names, so maybe Net for
| | 02:06 | the Network admin and for the person John Doe,
we'll put in JPD for John Patrick Doe.
| | 02:14 | Initials are really helpful if you want to have
resources show in your Gantt Chart timescale.
| | 02:20 | You can assign initials instead of the
resource name so that the names don't
| | 02:24 | take up as much space,
but you can still see who's assigned.
| | 02:27 | Another thing to keep in mind is that you can't
have commas and brackets in Resource Names.
| | 02:33 | So if you are going to do last name
first name, just leave the comma out.
| | 02:37 | The next field is Group field.
| | 02:39 | That's good for categorizing your resources.
| | 02:42 | So you can see that some of the resources
already have a group like the IT group
| | 02:46 | and then the vendors assigned to the project.
| | 02:49 | You can use the Group field to put all
your resources together so that can see
| | 02:54 | everything that the IT group is doing
or you can even group by the vendors to
| | 02:58 | see how much you are spending on outside vendors.
| | 03:01 | So for example, the Network admin is
in the IT group, whereas John Doe is
| | 03:07 | actually a contractor, so maybe we'll
set up a new group called Contractor.
| | 03:13 | Now the next field that you come to
is Maximum Units and you can see it
| | 03:17 | says Max, but it actually means Maximum units
and this is part of work resources availability.
| | 03:24 | The other part is over here in the base column,
which actually stands for base calendar.
| | 03:29 | So these two fields will tell the project
how much a work resource available.
| | 03:34 | On the first one, the Max units, Project
fills in 100% and that means that the
| | 03:40 | resource is dedicated or 100% of their
available time is dedicated to this project.
| | 03:45 | Most of the time, that's what you want.
| | 03:49 | If you think about it when somebody attends a
meeting, they don't attend the meeting half time;
| | 03:54 | they're either there or there not.
| | 03:56 | So hundred percent is a good value.
| | 03:58 | The one time where you might increase
the value is if you have a team of people
| | 04:03 | with interchangeable skills.
| | 04:05 | So for example the movers, let's say
you have a team of five movers and you
| | 04:09 | really don't care which of the five you get,
but you have five of them so you
| | 04:14 | can change the Maximum units to 500%, to
indicate that you have five full time workers.
| | 04:21 | The base calendar on the other hand,
defines the working schedule for a work resource.
| | 04:27 | So for example let's say that John Doe,
the contractor, works part time.
| | 04:32 | So we assign the Office Relo part-time
calendar to this resource.
| | 04:37 | Well, let's see how the Maximum units
and the calendar work together.
| | 04:41 | So I double-click the Resource row for John Doe
and the Resource Information dialog box comes up.
| | 04:48 | I am going to go to the General
tab and click Change Working Time.
| | 04:52 | Now you can see here that
it says 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM.
| | 04:57 | If I go look at the Workweeks tab,
I've got the default workweek for this
| | 05:02 | part-time calendar and click Details
and then I select Monday through Friday
| | 05:07 | and you can see very lightly that the part-time schedule
is 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM, Monday through Friday.
| | 05:14 | Well John Doe is assigned 100% to the project,
so that's 100% of his available time.
| | 05:20 | Well, that's based on the calendar; and in this calendar,
| | 05:24 | the Workweek is 10 hours,
two hours a day, five days a week.
| | 05:30 | So he is available for this project 10 hours a week.
| | 05:34 | So I'll cancel out of the here.
| | 05:37 | The other thing that you can do is you
can actually change a Resources calendar,
| | 05:41 | for example, to show when they
take vacation, that sort of thing.
| | 05:45 | So do that, I'll click Cancel, get out
of these dialog boxes; and in this case,
| | 05:52 | I am going to go to the Project tab
and click Change Working Time here.
| | 05:56 | Well, now you can see I've got the
John Doe resource calendar is open and you
| | 06:03 | can see that it's based on the part-time
calendar so that's still in place, but
| | 06:07 | now we are actually going to put
things that are specific to John Doe.
| | 06:10 | In this case we are going to add his vacation,
that starts on August 5, 2014
| | 06:19 | and it finishes on August 9. Now you can see
that those days are set up as nonworking days.
| | 06:30 | Click OK to close this dialog box.
| | 06:33 | You will see how to use the Cost fields
when we talk about setting up resource costs.
| | 06:37 | Now I am going to open up the
Information dialog box for the Project Manager.
| | 06:42 | So double-click and the resource
information dialog box opens.
| | 06:47 | You can see that there's actually quite a few fields
you can fill in for a resource. One of them is the
| | 06:52 | generic checkbox. So since this is a
job skill name, turn on a checkbox and that way
| | 06:59 | you can check your project and look for
the generic resources that are assigned.
| | 07:03 | Then you'll know who you still have to replace
before the work actually gets underway.
| | 07:07 | You can also do things like change
resource availability during different date ranges.
| | 07:12 | On the Cost tab, we can set up different Cost tables.
| | 07:17 | For example if you have a contractor
who charges different amounts depending
| | 07:22 | on the work they do, you can actually
set up these different Cost tables to
| | 07:25 | reflect those different rates.
| | 07:30 | Now one thing that project does when
you assign resources if you type in a
| | 07:34 | resource name that doesn't exist
in your Project file, Project will
| | 07:38 | automatically create a new resource for you.
| | 07:40 | Well, the problem with that is if you
introduce a typo into the Resource name,
| | 07:45 | you will end up with a duplicate resource
and that causes all sorts of problems.
| | 07:51 | So you can tell project not to create
those new resources for you automatically.
| | 07:56 | To do that, go to the File tab, choose options
and then go to the Advanced category.
| | 08:03 | You can see down the General options
for this Project section,
| | 08:07 | the Automatically add new resources and tasks,
and the checkbox is turned on.
| | 08:11 | If you don't want Project to automatically
add new resources, turn the checkbox off.
| | 08:17 | That way if you type a name that doesn't
exist in the Project file, Project will
| | 08:22 | ask you if you want to add the resource.
| | 08:24 | If it is a new valid resource, click Yes to add it
and if it's a typo, you can
| | 08:30 | click No and then choose the resource that you want.
| | 08:32 | After you create work resources,
you're ready to assign them to tasks.
| | 08:38 | Once you do that, project uses the values
from Resource fields to calculate
| | 08:42 | the schedule and cost.
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| Creating a material resource| 00:00 | Material resources represent tangible items
consumed by a project, like packing
| | 00:05 | boxes or cases of cider for the new office open house.
| | 00:10 | Material resources don't have a time component
like work resources so you fill-in a few less fields.
| | 00:15 | To create a material resource, go to the Resource Sheet.
| | 00:19 | On the View tab, just click Resource Sheet.
| | 00:23 | Then go to the first blank Resource Name cell and
type-in the name of the resource, in this case Cider.
| | 00:30 | Then when I click the next cell, the
Type cell, Project automatically fills
| | 00:35 | in Work, but we want a material resource, so
click the down arrow and then choose Material.
| | 00:41 | You see a few fields go away.
| | 00:43 | Well, you can still fill-in the Initials field, Project
puts in the first letter, but that's not that helpful.
| | 00:49 | So we'll type-in the full name
because Cider is fairly short.
| | 00:52 | You will notice that Maximum units,
Overtime Rate, Base Calendar don't have any
| | 00:58 | values and that's because the Material
Resource doesn't have a time component.
| | 01:03 | But Project does fill-in the Standard Rate field with 0.
| | 01:07 | So you want to actually apply the cost of this material
per unit in the Standard Rate field.
| | 01:12 | Well, let's say Cider could cost $5 a bottle
or maybe $55 a case, we are going
| | 01:20 | to do $55 a case, so we put the 55 in.
| | 01:23 | But the thing is, if this project
lasts for awhile, chances are you won't
| | 01:29 | remember what the $55 is for, was it for
a bottle or a case, so that's where the
| | 01:35 | Material label comes in.
| | 01:36 | It says Material, but it actually is the Material label field.
| | 01:40 | Project really doesn't care what you put in this cell.
| | 01:43 | It's a reminder for you of what
the units are for this material.
| | 01:48 | So I'll type-in Case,
and that's all you have to do for now.
| | 01:54 | Material resources don't affect the
Project schedule, but they do affect cost.
| | 01:59 | After you fill in a few fields for a
material resource, you can assign it to
| | 02:03 | tasks so Project can track the quantity and cost.
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| Setting up costs for work and material resources| 00:00 | When you fill-in Cost fields for Work
and Material resources, Project uses them
| | 00:05 | to calculate Project costs.
| | 00:07 | The labor cost for an assignment is
the assigned work resources cost rate
| | 00:12 | multiplied by the amount of time assigned.
| | 00:14 | For material resources, the cost is the
rate multiplied by the quantity assigned.
| | 00:19 | So let's go to the Resource Sheet.
| | 00:21 | On the View tab, click Resource Sheet.
| | 00:24 | I can see that the Office manager
doesn't have a Standard Rate assigned, so
| | 00:28 | we'll have to add one.
| | 00:30 | Just click the Standard Rate cell and
if the Office manager is $60 an hour, you
| | 00:35 | can type 60 and press Enter.
| | 00:37 | You can see that Project automatically
adds the Slash (/) in the hour.
| | 00:41 | But you can actually assign resources by other time periods.
| | 00:45 | Let's say that the Webmaster is a contractor
and you actually pay her a $1000 a
| | 00:51 | month to maintain the website.
| | 00:53 | So in the Standard Rate cell, type a 1000,
the Slash (/) and then mon for month, and press Enter;
| | 01:02 | and from now on Project will use a $1000 a month
to calculate how much the Webmaster costs.
| | 01:08 | For Material Resource, like the Cider down at
the end, the Standard Rate is the cost per unit.
| | 01:14 | So in this case it's $55.
| | 01:18 | The unit is in the Material label field, and that's Case.
| | 01:22 | Well, let's see how this works.
| | 01:24 | Go to the Task tab and click the Gantt chart button.
| | 01:27 | I am also going to display the Details pane,
so I turn on the Details checkbox.
| | 01:33 | I am going to right-click this and choose
Resources & Successors so we can
| | 01:39 | see assignments and scroll down to the bottom
of the schedule and choose the Open house task.
| | 01:46 | Here you see that the Project manager is
assigned to the Open house for eight hours.
| | 01:51 | In addition, the Cider is also assigned to the
Open house, and in this case it's five cases.
| | 01:57 | Let's say I want to make that four cases.
| | 02:00 | In the Work cell type 4 and then when
I click OK, just click Continue and OK,
| | 02:09 | and now you can see that Project fills
in the label, so the quantity changes,
| | 02:13 | but Project takes the label from
the Resource Sheet and fills this in.
| | 02:17 | Let's look at how the Costs work.
So I right-click and choose Cost.
| | 02:22 | Well, Project manager is assigned for eight hours
and costs $80 an hour, so the cost is $640.
| | 02:31 | The Cider costs $55 a case and there
are four cases assigned to this task,
| | 02:36 | so the cost is $220.
| | 02:37 | Let's go back to the Resource Sheet and
take a look at some of the other costs fields.
| | 02:44 | So first I'll turn off the Details pane
and go back to the Resource Sheet.
| | 02:48 | You can see that the next column after
Standard Rate is the Overtime Rate.
| | 02:53 | Overtime Rate only applies to work resources
because you assign them by time,
| | 02:58 | and in fact the only time you have to
fill-in the Overtime Rate is if somebody
| | 03:03 | is paid extra when they work over time hours.
| | 03:07 | So for example, if somebody is paid $80
an hour and it doesn't matter how many
| | 03:12 | hours they work in a week, then the
Standard Rate is enough, because project will
| | 03:16 | multiply the Standard Rate by every
single hour you assign and you're all set,
| | 03:20 | but if that resource charges extra
for over time, you'll have to designate
| | 03:25 | over time hours and then Project will
multiply those hours by the Overtime Rate.
| | 03:31 | The next field is Cost Per Use.
| | 03:33 | Now that's something that occurs once
every time you assign a resource to a task.
| | 03:38 | So for example with the dumpster,
there is a $450 charge every time you bring
| | 03:44 | the dumpster on site or maybe with the
Cider for the Open house there is a $150
| | 03:50 | setup charge for setting up the bar.
| | 03:52 | So you type 150 in the Cost/Use cell.
| | 03:55 | That way when you assign Cider to a task,
in addition to the Standard Rate times
| | 04:01 | the quantity of cases, you will
also have a $150 charge for the setup.
| | 04:06 | The final cost field is a Accrue.
| | 04:08 | You can see that Project fills in
Prorated and that means that the cost is
| | 04:13 | spread over the duration of the task,
but in some cases you might want to have
| | 04:17 | it at the beginning or the end.
| | 04:19 | So for example with Airfare, you pay for
that upfront, so you can click the down
| | 04:24 | arrow and choose Start, or maybe
for the Webmaster, the Webmaster is a
| | 04:28 | contractor, so you pay the Webmaster at the end.
| | 04:32 | Click the down arrow in that cell and choose End.
| | 04:35 | By filling in Resource cost fields, you tell Project
how much work and material resources cost.
| | 04:41 | That way the program can calculate costs
when you assign these types of resources to tasks.
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| Creating a cost resource| 00:00 | The Cost Resource type is perfect for
expenses that aren't based on time or
| | 00:04 | quantity, like airfare, fees or tuition.
| | 00:09 | Unlike work and material resources,
you assign values when you assign
| | 00:12 | cost resources to tasks.
| | 00:15 | That way the cost for each assignment
can differ, like different airfares for
| | 00:19 | each trip and you can track the total
amount for each cost category separately.
| | 00:25 | Cost resources are the easiest ones to create.
| | 00:28 | So let's go to the resource sheet.
| | 00:29 | On the View tab, click Resource Sheet.
| | 00:33 | Then in the first blank Resource Name cell
type the name of the cost resource,
| | 00:38 | in this case Permits.
| | 00:40 | Then when I click the Type cell, Project
fills in Work, but I can just click the
| | 00:46 | down arrow and then choose Cost.
| | 00:48 | You can see the only other two fields
that are important are Initials and Accrue.
| | 00:53 | I'll type the name Permit in the
Initials field and Prorated is fine.
| | 01:00 | So we are already done.
| | 01:02 | That's all you have to fill in.
| | 01:04 | With Cost resources, you tell Project how
much they cost when you assign them to tasks.
| | 01:09 | So let's see how that works.
| | 01:11 | On the Task tab, click the Gantt Chart button.
| | 01:14 | I'm also going to display the
Details pane with the task forms.
| | 01:17 | So on the View tab, turn on the Details checkbox,
and the task form appears.
| | 01:22 | Now we'll assign some cost to
cost resources on a couple of tasks.
| | 01:28 | First there is the Visit Oakland site task.
| | 01:30 | So this task already has Airfare and Lodging assigned.
| | 01:34 | I need to assign cost, so I right-click
the Task Form and choose Cost and
| | 01:41 | now I can see the Cost field.
| | 01:42 | So I select the Cost cell for Airfare
and type in the cost of that airfare.
| | 01:47 | Then select the Cost cell for lodging
and type in the value for lodging and
| | 01:52 | click OK, and you can see that
those costs are now assigned.
| | 01:56 | Now I am going to select the Visit Seattle site.
| | 01:59 | On this task I have to assign the cost resources.
| | 02:03 | So I click the first Resource Name cell,
click the down arrow and choose Airfare.
| | 02:09 | Click the next cell, click the
down arrow and choose Lodging.
| | 02:13 | It turns out I have to click OK to save
that first before I can add the costs.
| | 02:19 | So now that they're assigned, I'll put
in the costs, $350 for Cost for Airfare,
| | 02:25 | $360 for Lodging and click OK
and now those costs are assigned.
| | 02:33 | I am going to close the Details pane
and go to the Resource Usage view
| | 02:42 | and here you can see for the Lodging cost
resource, you can see the two individual
| | 02:46 | assignments with the different values
for each one, but you can also see in the
| | 02:52 | Lodging Summary row that there is the
Total Cost for the Project for Lodging, $550.
| | 02:56 | And similarly for Airfare;
| | 03:00 | you can see the two individual
assignments and what they cost, but in the
| | 03:04 | Summary row, you can see that
this project has $500 in Airfare.
| | 03:09 | Cost resources are a great way to track
expenses that aren't time or material related.
| | 03:14 | Just remember you assign the cost
for a cost resource when you assign
| | 03:18 | the resource to a task.
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|
|
6. Assigning Tasks to ResourcesUnderstanding duration, work, and units| 00:00 | A task's duration, work and
assignment units are inextricably connected.
| | 00:05 | The mathematical relationship is
simple and it's the key to getting your
| | 00:09 | resource assignments right every time.
| | 00:12 | First, a few definitions.
| | 00:14 | Duration is the length of a task from its start to its finish.
| | 00:18 | If a task starts on Monday morning and ends on
Friday afternoon, the duration is five work days.
| | 00:24 | Work represents the person hours
it takes to complete the task.
| | 00:28 | For example, a task has duration of five days,
but you are going to spend only
| | 00:34 | 10 hours on the task. The work is 10 hours.
| | 00:37 | Assignment units usually referred to as units,
are the percentage of the
| | 00:41 | assigned resources available time dedicated to the task.
| | 00:46 | Full-time is 100%, half time is 50%.
| | 00:50 | You can show units as a decimal, too.
In that case full-time is 1.0 and half time is 0.5.
| | 00:58 | Basic algebra is all it takes to understand
the relationship between duration, work and units.
| | 01:04 | Duration equals work divided by units.
| | 01:08 | Suppose you estimate work at 40 hours
and you specify that the resource works on
| | 01:12 | the task 50% of the time.
| | 01:15 | Doing the math gives you a duration of 80 hours,
which is the same as 10 full workdays.
| | 01:21 | Switching the formula round,
Work equals Duration times Units.
| | 01:26 | If you estimate Duration to be five days
and the resource works 40% on the task,
| | 01:31 | the work is two full workdays or 16 hours.
| | 01:35 | Similarly Project calculates units
if you give it the duration and the work.
| | 01:40 | Say you set the work at 40 hours and the
Duration at 4 weeks, which is 160 work hours.
| | 01:46 | The percentage of time the resource works
on the task is 25% shown here as 0.25.
| | 01:53 | Project has built-in rules about which
values it calculates. Unless you give
| | 01:58 | Project specific instructions the program
tries to calculate Duration first,
| | 02:03 | then Work and finally as a last resort, Units.
| | 02:07 | For example, if you fill in project Work and Units,
it will calculate Duration.
| | 02:13 | If you fill in only Work, Project calculates
Duration by filling in the Unit cell
| | 02:18 | with 100% or the Resource's Maximum unit.
| | 02:22 | If you fill in the Duration and Units,
Project calculates Work.
| | 02:27 | If you fill in only Duration, Project
calculates Work by filling in the Unit
| | 02:32 | cell with 100% or the Resource's Maximum unit.
| | 02:36 | And if you give it both Duration and Work,
it will calculate Units.
| | 02:41 | Additional factors come into play when
you change resource assignments, which are
| | 02:46 | covered when we talk about
modifying resource assignments.
| | 02:50 | The values you enter for Duration,
Work or Units, determines how Project
| | 02:54 | calculates resource assignments.
| | 02:57 | By understanding how these fields work together,
you can assign resources and get the results you want.
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| Assigning resources to tasks| 00:00 | Your project schedule doesn't come into
focus until you assign resources to tasks.
| | 00:06 | How many resources you assign, their
work schedule and availability all affect
| | 00:11 | how long tasks take.
| | 00:13 | Project offers several methods
for assigning resources to tasks.
| | 00:17 | The Gantt Chart view with the entry
table is great for simple assignments.
| | 00:22 | So here is the Gantt Chart view.
| | 00:24 | I'm going to widen the table so I can see
the Resource Names column.
| | 00:29 | Now when you use this view it's a good
idea to turn off the summary tasks, and
| | 00:34 | that way you just see the work tasks
that you want to assign the resources to.
| | 00:39 | So go to the Format tab, turn off the
Summary Tasks checkbox, and now here are
| | 00:45 | the work tasks that we want to assign resources to.
| | 00:48 | So I want to assign a resource to this first task,
Identify physical requirements.
| | 00:53 | So I click the Resource Names cell,
click the down arrow, in this case turn on
| | 00:59 | the checkbox for the Relo PM.
| | 01:01 | Then when I press Enter the assignment is made.
| | 01:05 | One of the great things about this method
is you can easily copy assignments to
| | 01:09 | other tasks just by dragging in the table.
| | 01:12 | So I point to the fill handle, the
little green box at the lower right-hand
| | 01:17 | corner of the cell, and when you see the
Plus (+) you can just drag across other cells.
| | 01:21 | So I'll drag down to the next three tasks
and now I have the project manager
| | 01:26 | assigned to all four tasks just like that.
| | 01:29 | Another method is the Assign Resources dialog box.
| | 01:33 | So go to the Resource tab and click
Assign Resources, and you see the Assign
| | 01:39 | Resources dialog box and you
can move it to wherever you want.
| | 01:42 | Now one thing with this dialog box is it has some options.
| | 01:46 | So for example, you might see the dialog box like this.
| | 01:49 | If you want to see the options
just click the Plus (+) and then you can see
| | 01:54 | that you can filter by particular type of resource
or resources that have enough time available.
| | 02:00 | So in this case it's filtered by Work
resources, but if I want to see all the
| | 02:05 | resources I can just choose that filter and the list changes.
| | 02:10 | If I want to see resources who have
enough time available for an assignment,
| | 02:14 | I can turn on this Available to work
checkbox and type the number of hours
| | 02:18 | I'm looking for over that duration.
| | 02:19 | But in this case, I'm just going to do a regular assignment.
| | 02:23 | So for example, I'll select the
Walkthrough office task, and I want to assign
| | 02:28 | the Project Manager and the assistant to this task.
| | 02:32 | So I scroll down the list, I find
the two resources I want, I can just
| | 02:37 | drag across both cells and then click Assign;
and you can see a couple of things happen.
| | 02:43 | First of all the resources popped the
top of the list and the check marks show
| | 02:47 | that they are assigned to the task.
| | 02:49 | Project automatically assigns the units at a 100%,
but you can change that, so
| | 02:54 | I can type 50% for both of those and as soon
as I move away from the cell that's changed.
| | 03:01 | So you can see here that they are both assigned 50%.
| | 03:04 | If you want to remove a resource
you can do that, just select the resource and
| | 03:10 | then click Remove, and now you can see
the resource is back down in the list and
| | 03:15 | when I go back up to the top,
only the assistant is assigned.
| | 03:19 | If I select another task, now you can
see that task name up at the top and I can
| | 03:24 | do the same thing in Assign Resources to this task.
| | 03:27 | When I'm done just click the Close button
to close the Assign Resources dialog box.
| | 03:33 | You can also assign resources in the task form.
| | 03:36 | So to do that go to the View tab and
turn on the Details checkbox, and then Task
| | 03:42 | Form appears at the bottom of the window.
| | 03:44 | I click the Select site task so
that I can assign resources to this task.
| | 03:50 | In this case, I select the first Resource Name cell,
click the down arrow and choose the Relo PM.
| | 03:58 | Well, I don't even have to type in the units.
| | 04:00 | I can just click OK and Project fills in a 100%.
| | 04:04 | Then later if I decide to change
those units I can type that in and because
| | 04:10 | this is Effort driven when I click OK,
the Duration changes to 20 days, because
| | 04:15 | the total work of 80 hours stays the same.
| | 04:18 | Now assigning material resources
is just a little bit different.
| | 04:22 | So let's go down to the bottom of
the Project and select the Open house.
| | 04:26 | Now I'm going to assign Cider to Open house task.
| | 04:29 | So in the Resource Name cell, click
the down arrow choose Cider and I need
| | 04:35 | to fill in a quantity. So it's not time, it's a quantity.
| | 04:39 | I can actually type that in either units or work.
| | 04:43 | So I'll type 4 and then click OK.
| | 04:46 | You can see the Project fills in the material label
so you know it's four cases of Cider.
| | 04:52 | The Assign Resources dialog box has the
most bells and whistles for assignments,
| | 04:57 | but each method of assigning
resources may come in handy.
| | 05:00 | So try each one out and either stick to
your favorite or choose the best method
| | 05:06 | for the current situation.
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| Using Team Planner to assign resources| 00:00 | The Team Planner view is only available
in Project Professional.
| | 00:04 | It's an easy way to work on resource
assignments for small teams.
| | 00:08 | It shows a swim lane for each resource
assigned to the project and the tasks
| | 00:13 | they are working on appear in a timescale.
| | 00:15 | To see the team planner view, go to
the View tab and then click Team Planner.
| | 00:20 | On the left side, you see a list of
the resources assigned to the project and
| | 00:25 | then a swim lane like in a swimming pool for each one.
| | 00:27 | Well, I'm going to scroll down a little
bit to see the Relocation Project Manager.
| | 00:32 | And one thing you notice is
there is an Unscheduled Tasks column.
| | 00:37 | That represents tasks that are assigned to
a resource, but don't have any dates.
| | 00:42 | So I manually scheduled tasks.
| | 00:44 | For tasks like this you can
just drag them into the Timescale.
| | 00:48 | Grab it, you see the four-headed arrow
and then drag it to where you want it;
| | 00:53 | in this case, I'm going to put it on the
week of February 23 and it drops into place.
| | 00:59 | The bottom of the window has a panel
for Unassigned Tasks, so this represents
| | 01:03 | tasks without resources assigned.
| | 01:06 | If they were also unscheduled, they'd
still be in the Unscheduled Task column.
| | 01:09 | In this case, I want to assign the
relocation project manager to the task
| | 01:14 | Identify potential sites.
| | 01:16 | Well all I have to do is drag this up into the Timescale,
let go and the assignment is made.
| | 01:23 | Let's say that I also want to reassign the
Draft the budget task to the Project Manager;
| | 01:29 | just right-click that box point to Reassign To
on the shortcut menu and choose
| | 01:35 | the Relocation Project Manager.
| | 01:37 | Now one thing you notice are these
red brackets, and that shows an over
| | 01:42 | allocation, because there are few
tasks going on all the same time.
| | 01:47 | One solution is to move some of these tasks
to a time period when the resource has time.
| | 01:52 | So for example, if I want to move the
Draft the budget task let me go to the
| | 01:56 | Task tab, I select the Draft the budget
task and then in the Tasks section click
| | 02:04 | the Move down arrow and choose When
Resources are Available, and that pops the
| | 02:10 | Draft the budget task to the end where
the relocation project manager has time.
| | 02:16 | It's also really easy to reassign tasks to other resources.
| | 02:19 | So you can see there is still an over allocation here,
so I'm going to reassign this other task.
| | 02:25 | Just right-click it and reassign it to
the Office Manager and it goes up into
| | 02:31 | the Office Manager swim lane.
| | 02:33 | Now on the Format tab for the Team Planner
there is a Prevent Overallocations button.
| | 02:38 | Well that sounds like a great idea,
if you turn it on then Project actually
| | 02:44 | won't even let you overallocate a resource.
| | 02:46 | For example, I'll try to drag this
Identify tenant improvements task to the
| | 02:52 | Project Manager and put it at
the same time as Draft the budget.
| | 02:56 | And you see that Project just moves the
tasks so that they won't be overallocated.
| | 03:01 | There's only one problem with this.
| | 03:03 | If you go to another view and make
changes that create overallocations, when
| | 03:09 | you come back to the Team Planner,
Project will automatically move everything to
| | 03:14 | remove the overallocations and you
actually won't know what it's done.
| | 03:18 | So it's really better to turn it off
and take care of the overallocations yourself.
| | 03:24 | If you work with a small team of resources
and use Project Professional;
| | 03:28 | Team Planner is another option for assigning resources
and looking at resource assignments.
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| Finding overallocations| 00:00 | Workloads have to be just right
so you keep your team members busy
| | 00:04 | without burning them out.
| | 00:06 | Project's Resource Usage View makes it easy
to scan assignments for overallocations.
| | 00:12 | Other views filters and fields can also help you
find overallocations that you need to resolve.
| | 00:18 | To see the Resource Usage view, go to
the View tab and click Resource Usage.
| | 00:23 | In this case, I'm going to go to the
Task tab and click Scroll to Task, so I can
| | 00:29 | see the assignments over in the grid.
| | 00:31 | Well finding over allocations is
really easy because you can see an
| | 00:36 | overallocated resource, the Resource
Name is red and bold and other values in
| | 00:41 | the table are also red and bold.
| | 00:43 | Then if you want to see the time
periods that are overallocated, just look in
| | 00:48 | the grid and look for the red text.
| | 00:51 | So you can see a few weeks here are
overallocated and then a few more.
| | 00:55 | Because the Resource Usage View shows
assignments, you don't necessarily see a
| | 01:01 | lot of resources at the same time.
| | 01:03 | But there's a shortcut to finding
all the overallocated resources.
| | 01:08 | Go to the View tab and in the Filter dropdown menu
choose Overallocated Resources,
| | 01:13 | and now all of a sudden you can see
that there are three resources
| | 01:18 | that are overallocated on this project,
just click the little triangle twice and
| | 01:24 | then all the assignments appear.
| | 01:26 | If you want to go back to the full list,
you can also click the down arrow in
| | 01:29 | the Filter box and choose No Filter and
then you have the complete list again.
| | 01:33 | Initially the view has a row for work hours
that are assigned and you can
| | 01:39 | see the total for all the assignments
might be overallocated, but each
| | 01:43 | individual assignment is not necessarily
overallocated, it's just that they
| | 01:48 | occur at the same time.
| | 01:50 | One of the things that you can do is you can
actually look at overallocated hours.
| | 01:54 | So to do that, go to the Format tab
and then turn on the checkbox for Overallocation.
| | 02:01 | And now you can see in the grid there
is a second row for each assignment for
| | 02:06 | overallocated hours.
| | 02:09 | So in this case 64 hours are assigned,
40 of them are the regular workweek, and
| | 02:15 | 24 hours represent the overallocation.
| | 02:19 | If you want to look at resources
remaining availability, may be to see who you
| | 02:23 | can reassign work to, turn on the checkbox
for Remaining Availability, and now a
| | 02:29 | third appears and here you can see
that the Project Manager actually has some
| | 02:34 | time available in April and May.
| | 02:37 | Another way to look at overallocations
is with the resource graph.
| | 02:41 | To see that go to the View tab and turn
on the Details checkbox, then click the
| | 02:48 | down arrow and choose Resource Graph.
| | 02:51 | I'm going to select the Project Manager
and you can see that there are blue bars
| | 02:56 | that show the regular work schedule and
the overallocations appear as red bars.
| | 03:02 | It's also easy to spot availability
because there are no bars.
| | 03:06 | So no assignments take place during that period.
| | 03:10 | You can change the fields that appear in
the Resource Graph, just click the pane
| | 03:15 | to make sure it's active
and then go to the Format tab.
| | 03:19 | In the graph dropdown list choose the
field that you want to see, for example
| | 03:24 | Remaining Availability and now you can
see this time period, when the project
| | 03:28 | manager is available.
| | 03:30 | So for example if some of those tasks
that are overallocated can wait, you can
| | 03:35 | move them to when the project manager has time.
| | 03:37 | Project has several views that help
you see resource assignment and overallocations.
| | 03:43 | You can use a view like Resource Usage
and the overallocated resources filter to
| | 03:48 | find overallocations.
| | 03:50 | Then you can display other views
like the Resource Graph to analyze the situation.
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| Assigning resources with effort-driven and non-effort-driven scheduling| 00:00 | In Project Effort-driven scheduling
means a task's total work stays the same as
| | 00:06 | you add or remove resources.
| | 00:08 | It's the norm because you often add
resources to a task to get the work done
| | 00:12 | in a shorter duration.
| | 00:14 | However, meetings are one common
example of tasks that don't use
| | 00:18 | effort-driven scheduling.
| | 00:20 | Meetings don't get shorter when
you add people to the attendee list.
| | 00:23 | The duration stays the same, so the
total work for the task increases.
| | 00:28 | So let's look at the Identify physical requirements task.
| | 00:31 | When I select it, you can see that the
Duration is 20 days and the Effort driven
| | 00:37 | checkbox is turned on.
| | 00:38 | Well, I've got the Relocation Project
Manager assigned and with the duration of
| | 00:43 | 20 days the work is 160 hours.
| | 00:46 | Well let's see what happens when I add
the relocation assistant to this task.
| | 00:52 | I click the Resource Name cell, click the
down arrow and then choose Relo Assistant.
| | 00:59 | Now when I click OK, you can
see a couple of things happen.
| | 01:02 | First of all the work gets divided
between the project manager and the
| | 01:06 | assistant, they both get 80 hours of
work so the total work is still 160 hours,
| | 01:12 | but the duration actually shortens to 10 days.
| | 01:16 | Now let's look at a non-effort driven task,
present to management.
| | 01:21 | Well that's a meeting.
| | 01:22 | So when I select that, I'm going to
turn off the Effort driven checkbox.
| | 01:27 | You can see that the Project Manager is
assigned but I'm going to assign a few
| | 01:31 | other attendees, in this case, the CEO, the
CFO, the CIO and finally the Office Manager.
| | 01:47 | Well now the duration of the task is 4 hours
and the project manager has 4 hours of work assigned.
| | 01:53 | When I click OK, you can see that the
duration is still 4 hours, so it hasn't changed.
| | 02:00 | Instead each person assigned to
this meeting gets work of 4 hours.
| | 02:05 | So now let me switch quickly to the
Task Usage view and here you can see each
| | 02:14 | person assigned has four hours, but now the
total work has changed, it's gone up to 20 hours.
| | 02:22 | You can also tell Project whether you
want new tasks to be effort driven or not.
| | 02:27 | To do that, go to the File tab and choose Options.
| | 02:31 | Then go to the Schedule category, and
here in the Scheduling options for this
| | 02:38 | project section, you can see there's a
checkbox New tasks are effort driven.
| | 02:43 | So when it's turned on any new tasks
you create are effort driven, which is
| | 02:48 | usually what you want.
| | 02:50 | But if you don't want them effort driven,
just turn the checkbox off.
| | 02:53 | Effort-driven scheduling determines
what Project does when you add or remove
| | 02:58 | resources from a task.
| | 03:00 | If the work increases or decreases as
you add or remove resources it doesn't use
| | 03:06 | effort-driven scheduling.
| | 03:08 | If the duration changes when you
add or remove resources the task uses
| | 03:12 | effort-driven scheduling.
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| Modifying resource assignments| 00:00 | Resource assignment changes come in all shapes and sizes.
| | 00:04 | You can add or remove resources from a task,
change the task duration or work,
| | 00:09 | or adjust the percentage of time resources devote to a task.
| | 00:13 | You can change task types and the
values you enter for Duration, Work and Units
| | 00:18 | to get the changes you want.
| | 00:19 | The Task Usage view is a great way to
see what's going on with assignments.
| | 00:24 | If you don't see it, go to the View tab
and just click Task Usage.
| | 00:28 | I'm also going to turn on the Task Form.
| | 00:31 | So on the View tab, I'll turn on the
Details checkbox and the Task Form appears
| | 00:35 | in the bottom of the window.
| | 00:36 | I'm going to drag the divider down so I can
see all the tasks in the top half of the window.
| | 00:41 | Now when you work with assignments you
want to see more than work and duration.
| | 00:46 | Specifically you want to see Assignment Units
and Peak, so I'm going to insert those columns.
| | 00:56 | Right-click the header, choose Insert
Column and then choose the Peak field.
| | 01:01 | So now I see all of the fields
that I need for these assignments.
| | 01:06 | One thing to keep in mind, up here in a
task units I've added Assignment Units.
| | 01:11 | Well down in the Task Form there is a label
of units but that field is still assignment units.
| | 01:18 | So let's take a look at Task 1.
| | 01:20 | In this task Duration, Work and Units
all seem to play nicely together.
| | 01:24 | For example, the work is 40 hours,
the Duration is 5 days.
| | 01:29 | So as you would expect 40 hours is 8 hours a day,
so the Assignment Units is a 100% or full time;
| | 01:37 | that all makes sense.
| | 01:38 | In addition, if I decide to increase
the duration let's say 6 days, the
| | 01:46 | Assignment Units are still a 100%
and the Work increases to 48 hours.
| | 01:51 | The Peak field is actually a calculated field.
| | 01:55 | It represents the maximum allocation on an assignment.
| | 01:58 | So to see how that works, let's look at Task 2
and let's say that the resource
| | 02:04 | assigned Task 2 works 10 hours the first day.
| | 02:07 | So over in the grid on the first day,
I type 10 hours, and when I press Enter
| | 02:14 | you see that the Peak units changed.
| | 02:16 | The peak units are now 125% because
10 hours is 125% of a full work day.
| | 02:23 | However the Assignment Units are still
100%, that was what you have assigned
| | 02:29 | originally and if you extended this
task you'd really want that resource
| | 02:34 | assigned at that same 100%, not the 125%.
| | 02:37 | So if I change the work hours to 50 hours, you
can see that that's exactly what Project does.
| | 02:46 | The additional hours were still assigned at 8 hours a day.
| | 02:50 | The Peak field is also a factor if you use task types.
| | 02:54 | Now Task Types tell Project
what value you want to keep fixed.
| | 02:59 | Down in the Task Form you can see Fixed Units
is the Task Type for this task and that's the default.
| | 03:05 | That tells Project that you want to keep the units the same.
| | 03:08 | Well let's go to Task 3.
| | 03:11 | Task 3 is a fixed work task, you can
see that down the Task Form in the Task
| | 03:17 | type box and that tells Project that
you want to keep the work the same.
| | 03:21 | So in this case, let's say I change the Duration to 10 days.
| | 03:25 | Well Project changes the duration but
you can see that the work stays the same
| | 03:32 | at 40 hours, so what changes is the Peak units.
| | 03:36 | The resource was originally assigned
at a 100%, but now with this change in
| | 03:41 | duration, the Peak goes to 50% because
the resource only has to work 4 hours a
| | 03:47 | day or 50% of the time to get it done in that duration.
| | 03:52 | Now let's look at Task 4, this is a
Fixed Duration Task, and that tells Project
| | 03:57 | that the duration is going to stay the same.
| | 03:59 | So what happens if I change the work
to 60 hours? The Duration is 5 days, but
| | 04:07 | now the work is up to 60 hours and
that means that the Peak units go to 150%
| | 04:13 | because this resource has to work 12
hours a day to get the work done in 5 days.
| | 04:19 | Now if you've worked with Project for a while,
if you look at the Task Form, it
| | 04:23 | might actually be a little confusing,
because Duration, Work and Units don't
| | 04:28 | seem to be following its typical formula.
| | 04:31 | The duration is 5 days, the units are a 100%
and the work is 60 hours.
| | 04:36 | Well the reason for the confusion is
because this Unit cell is the assignment units.
| | 04:42 | If you extend the duration of the task
Project is going to use the 100% units
| | 04:47 | for the additional part of the task,
but its Peak units that's really
| | 04:52 | calculating the five days and 60 hours.
| | 04:54 | Another thing to notice is this green triangle,
and that represents a Smart Tag.
| | 05:00 | So if you make a change to a task you'll see that
the smart tag asks you what you want to do.
| | 05:07 | Just point to the triangle and then
you can see you have some choices.
| | 05:11 | So click the down arrow.
| | 05:13 | In this case, I increase the work so
Project automatically selects the option to
| | 05:18 | increase the hours resources work per day.
| | 05:21 | But if what you really intended to do was
increase Duration just select the other option.
| | 05:26 | I'm going to keep this one selected.
| | 05:28 | If a change doesn't do what you want,
go up to the Quick Access toolbar and
| | 05:33 | click Undo and then just try again.
| | 05:36 | Assignment Units, the Peak field,
and task types help you change resource
| | 05:41 | assignments and get the results you want.
| | 05:43 | Project's Smart Tags are another way to
tell the program what you're trying to
| | 05:47 | do when you modify a task.
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| Replacing resources on a task| 00:00 | There are several situations where you might
need to replace resources assigned to a task.
| | 00:05 | If you started by assigning generic resources,
you can replace them with the
| | 00:09 | names of the people who will actually do the work.
| | 00:12 | If people are overallocated, replacing them
on some other assignments is one
| | 00:16 | way to correct the problem, or, you might
have to replace someone because they
| | 00:19 | get sick or are no longer available.
| | 00:21 | One place you can replace resources
is the Assign Resources dialog box.
| | 00:27 | So go to the RESOURCE tab, and click Assign Resources.
| | 00:32 | If you want, just move the dialog box
to where you want it on the screen.
| | 00:36 | Now one of the great things about the
Assign Resources dialog box is you can
| | 00:40 | actually look for resources who have enough time available.
| | 00:43 | Let's say I want to replace the resource
assigned to the Identify additional
| | 00:47 | costs task, because you can see that there is
a red overallocation icon. So I click the task.
| | 00:54 | And you can see that the task name appears
here, so I know which task I'm working on.
| | 00:58 | In addition, I can look for resources who
have enough hours available to do this task.
| | 01:03 | So to do that, I turn on the Available to work checkbox,
and then type the number of hours.
| | 01:10 | It's a 10-day task, so I'm going to look for 80 hours.
| | 01:15 | Now this list shows all the resources
who have enough time available.
| | 01:19 | I want to replace the Project Manager.
| | 01:22 | So to do that, I select the Resource Name cell
for that assignment, and then click Replace.
| | 01:30 | Then in the Replace Resource dialog box,
I scroll down the list, find the
| | 01:35 | resource I want to assign, click that cell, and then click OK.
| | 01:40 | Now you can see that the Assistant is
assigned instead of the Project Manager.
| | 01:45 | If you want to change the units for the assignment,
click the Units cell, and type the new units.
| | 01:50 | And then when you click away, the assignment is made.
| | 01:54 | You can also replace resources in the tasks form.
| | 01:57 | So I'm going to close the Assign Resources dialog box,
click the Close button,
| | 02:02 | go to the VIEW tab, and turn on the Details checkbox.
| | 02:06 | And now I have the tasks form in the bottom of the window.
| | 02:09 | To show how this works, I am just going
to reassign this back to the Project Manager.
| | 02:14 | So I click the Resource Name cell with the Assistant,
click the down arrow, and choose the Project Manager.
| | 02:21 | If I want to change the Units, I can
do that right here, and then click OK.
| | 02:27 | And the replacement is made.
| | 02:29 | You can replace resources with the same tools
you use to assign them in the first place.
| | 02:34 | The Assign Resources dialog box and Tasks form
are readily available and easy to use.
| | 02:39 | The Assign Resources dialog box can
also help you look for people with enough
| | 02:44 | time available for the assignment.
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|
|
7. Working with ViewsChoosing a view| 00:00 | Over the lifetime of a project, you
need to look at it from many perspectives.
| | 00:04 | That's why Project has dozens of
built-in views that you can display in
| | 00:08 | different panes within the main Project window.
| | 00:10 | Project lets you pick the View you want
in a number of places within the program.
| | 00:15 | The initial View that you see is the
Timeline View at the top of the window, and
| | 00:20 | the Gantt Chart View at the bottom.
| | 00:22 | The Timeline View is a great View for an overall
picture of your project in just one simple bar.
| | 00:28 | Then at the bottom, the Gantt Chart
View fills in the detail with a table on the left
| | 00:32 | with columns of data about each task,
and on the right-hand side, you
| | 00:38 | have the Timescale that gives you a graphical
look at when those tasks actually occur.
| | 00:43 | One thing to understand about Project
Views is that this Gantt Chart View is
| | 00:47 | considered a single View, even though
it has a Table pane on the left, and a
| | 00:53 | Timescale pane on the right.
| | 00:54 | Now there are a couple of different places
that you can select Views.
| | 00:58 | The first place, since we're on the TASK tab,
is the Gantt Chart button right on
| | 01:04 | left-hand side of the Ribbon.
| | 01:06 | Click the top-half of the Gantt Chart button
to get the Gantt Chart View that
| | 01:10 | you have selected, click the bottom-half of
the Gantt Chart button to get a
| | 01:14 | drop-down menu of
different Views that you can apply.
| | 01:18 | If you don't see the View that you want,
go down to the very bottom of the
| | 01:22 | menu and choose More Views.
| | 01:24 | Then you get the More Views dialog box,
and you can select whatever View you want.
| | 01:29 | In this case, I am going to choose
Resource Allocation and then click Apply.
| | 01:34 | Now this View actually has two Views in it,
so it's called a Combination View.
| | 01:39 | It has the Resource Usage View in the top,
and it has the Leveling Gantt in the bottom.
| | 01:45 | If you want to turn off the bottom View,
go to the VIEW tab and turn off the Details checkbox.
| | 01:52 | Then I'll click the top-half of the Gantt Chart button
again to go back to the Gantt Chart.
| | 01:57 | Now the next place that you can
find Views is on the RESOURCE tab.
| | 02:01 | The RESOURCE tab is really similar to
what you see on the TASK tab, so you've
| | 02:05 | got a Views section on the left side of the Ribbon.
| | 02:08 | If you click the top-half of the button,
you see the Team Planner View, if you
| | 02:13 | click the bottom-half of the button,
you get the dropdown menu, and you can
| | 02:17 | choose the View that you want.
| | 02:18 | But the best place to get to Views is on the View tab.
| | 02:22 | It has two whole sections for choosing views.
| | 02:25 | The Task View section has several buttons
for popular task oriented views
| | 02:31 | like the Gantt Chart, Task Usage, and the
Calendar which looks like a desktop calendar.
| | 02:37 | Then the Resource View section has buttons
for the popular Resource Views.
| | 02:41 | So you can click one of those;
for example like Resource Usage.
| | 02:45 | This is another one that it's a single View
but it has two panes, the table on the left.
| | 02:49 | And in this case, rather than a timescale,
it has what we call a time phased
| | 02:55 | grid, so you can actually see data in the cells.
| | 02:59 | The other thing that's interesting
about the Usage View is that you can see,
| | 03:02 | I am going to scroll down a little bit,
in this case the Summary row is for a
| | 03:08 | resource and you actually see all the
different assignments for that resource.
| | 03:12 | So this information in the time scaled grid
is actually information about assignments.
| | 03:17 | Now there's one other spot that can
get to Views, and that's down at the very
| | 03:22 | lower right-hand corner of the window in the Status Bar.
| | 03:25 | There is an icon for Gantt Chart, Task Usage,
Team Planner, and Resource Sheet.
| | 03:32 | You can just click one of those
to get to that View at any time.
| | 03:36 | Another shortcut for getting to Views;
| | 03:38 | go up to the upper left-hand corner of the window,
and click this down-arrow on the Quick Access toolbar.
| | 03:46 | Then turn on the View command, and that adds a
dropdown list of Views that you can choose at any time.
| | 03:53 | The Quick Access toolbar is always available.
| | 03:56 | So it's a really great way to get to Views.
| | 03:58 | And it's got the More Views command down at the bottom.
| | 04:01 | If you want to remove that from the
Quick Access toolbar, click the down arrow
| | 04:05 | again, and just turn off the check mark.
| | 04:07 | The thing you can do is you can also tell
Project what your favorite View is
| | 04:12 | so it will show that every time you start a new project.
| | 04:16 | To do that, go to the FILE tab, and
choose Options, and then in the Project
| | 04:22 | Options dialog box, there is this default View.
| | 04:26 | Click the down arrow, choose the View that you want.
| | 04:29 | It's set to Gantt with Timeline.
| | 04:31 | But if you want just the Gantt Chart,
you could choose that in the menu.
| | 04:35 | I'm going to leave it the way it is though.
| | 04:38 | You can choose Views from several tabs in
the Ribbon as well as on the Status Bar.
| | 04:42 | Later, we'll talk about how to work
with the Timeline pane, the Primary pane,
| | 04:47 | and another View pane called the Details pane.
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| Working with a table| 00:00 | The Table pane on the left side of many
views like the one you see in the Gantt
| | 00:05 | Chart displays project fields and columns,
so you can see, or edit values for
| | 00:09 | tasks, resources, or assignments.
| | 00:12 | You can switch to the table that
appears to see different sets of data.
| | 00:16 | You can also adjust the width of the
Table pane to see more or less of the table.
| | 00:20 | In this Gantt Chart View, there is a
table on the left pane of the window.
| | 00:25 | If you want to change the table that
you see, on the View Tab, click the
| | 00:30 | down arrow for Tables, and then
choose the table that you want.
| | 00:35 | In this case, I'll click Summary,
and the Summary table appears.
| | 00:40 | The Summary table is a nice overview
of the information about tasks.
| | 00:44 | I'm going to widen the table here, and
you can see that the Summary table has
| | 00:49 | the Duration field, start date, finish date,
the percent of duration that's
| | 00:55 | complete, the task cost and
how many work hours are involved.
| | 01:00 | If you want to choose a different view,
click the down arrow on the Tables
| | 01:04 | button again, and choose a different table, like Cost.
| | 01:09 | And now you can see that the fields have changed.
| | 01:11 | So you can see the total cost for the task,
but you can also see the baseline cost.
| | 01:16 | It's 0 here because there's no baseline set yet.
| | 01:19 | You can see variance, you can see the
actual cost that's for the work that's
| | 01:23 | been done already, and the remaining cost for a task.
| | 01:27 | When you click this down arrow,
if you don't see the table you want in this
| | 01:31 | list, choose More Tables at the bottom.
| | 01:33 | Then the More Tables dialog box opens,
and you can select any table that's available.
| | 01:39 | I'm going to click Cancel for the time being.
| | 01:42 | I am also going to narrow this back.
| | 01:45 | Now there is one other way that you
can select tables, and that's with a cell
| | 01:49 | that's called the Select All Cells.
| | 01:52 | It gets its name because if you click it,
it's hidden here actually at the top
| | 01:56 | of the Task ID column, and the header row.
| | 01:59 | If you click the cell, it selects all the cells in the table.
| | 02:04 | However, if you right-click the cell,
a shortcut menu appears with tables that
| | 02:09 | you can apply to the view.
| | 02:10 | So you can just select the table that you want.
| | 02:13 | I'm going to go back to the Summary table.
| | 02:16 | Now with many tables, you actually
have to scroll to see all the fields.
| | 02:20 | To do that, just scroll as you normally would.
| | 02:23 | Go down to the horizontal scrollbar,
and you can drag that to the right,
| | 02:28 | or to the left to see the fields that you want.
| | 02:30 | However, if you want to see all the
fields along with the task name,
| | 02:34 | that's usually helpful, you can point to this
vertical divider in between the two panes
| | 02:40 | of the view and you can drag to
the right to see more of the table.
| | 02:44 | Then once you've seen what you need,
you can always drag to the left, so that
| | 02:50 | you can see more of the Timescale.
| | 02:51 | You can change the table and a view anytime
you want to see the information you need.
| | 02:56 | Later on, we'll talk about how to change
the fields that show up in a table.
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| Inserting and rearranging table columns| 00:00 | Project comes with lots of built-in tables,
but they don't necessarily contain
| | 00:04 | the fields you want to see or in the order you want them.
| | 00:08 | You can add, remove, or rearrange
columns directly in a table whether it's
| | 00:12 | built-in or one you've customized.
| | 00:15 | You can even save your modified table as a new one.
| | 00:18 | The easiest way to make changes
in a table is to work right in the table.
| | 00:22 | That way, you can see the changes you
make right away, and if they're not what
| | 00:26 | you want, you can just keep changing until you get it right.
| | 00:29 | In this case, the Summary table is displayed.
| | 00:32 | It's got all the basic columns for this table,
it's got the task name, duration, start, finish, and so on.
| | 00:39 | But let's say I wanted to insert a new field into this table.
| | 00:43 | Well, to do that, I right-click one
of the column headings, and then on the
| | 00:48 | Shortcut menu, choose Insert Column.
| | 00:50 | You can see from the dropdown list,
Project has lots of fields.
| | 00:54 | So the one I want to add is constraint type.
| | 00:57 | The easiest way to get to that is to start typing its name.
| | 01:00 | Now you can see, by the time I type Cons,
there are only two fields to pick from.
| | 01:06 | So I just click Constraint Type and the column goes in.
| | 01:10 | Now there is another way to add a column to a table,
and that's on the very right side of the table.
| | 01:16 | So use the scrollbar to scroll over to
the right side, and you'll see the Add
| | 01:21 | New Column column, and it always
sits on the right side of the table.
| | 01:26 | So to add a column in this way, click
the down arrow, you get that same long
| | 01:31 | list of fields, and you can scroll down the list,
or you can just click.
| | 01:36 | In this case, the field I want is right near the top.
| | 01:39 | So I click % Work Complete, and the column goes in.
| | 01:44 | Interestingly, if I drag to the right,
you'll see that the Add New Column is
| | 01:48 | still there, but I've got this new column.
| | 01:50 | Let's say you want to rearrange the columns in the table.
| | 01:55 | You want them in a different order;
| | 01:57 | % Complete, and % Work Complete are two good
values to compare, so I want them side-by-side.
| | 02:02 | To do that, when I point to the % Work Complete heading,
| | 02:08 | I see the four-headed arrow, and that says
that I can drag it to the side.
| | 02:11 | So I drag it over to where I want it,
and you can see that the vertical gray bar
| | 02:16 | shows me where it's going to drop when
I let go of the mouse button. So here I go.
| | 02:21 | I'm going to let go of the mouse button
and % Work Complete drops into place
| | 02:26 | right next to % Complete.
| | 02:28 | It's also easy to remove columns.
| | 02:30 | So I go back over to left side of the table,
and let's say I'm done using the
| | 02:35 | Constraint Type field and I want to get
rid of this column, just right-click its heading,
| | 02:41 | and choose Hide Column on the
Shortcut menu, and the field goes away.
| | 02:45 | One thing to think about is the changes
that you make stay in this table.
| | 02:49 | So the next time you bring this table up,
any changes you've made will appear.
| | 02:53 | But you can also save the modified table as a new one.
| | 02:57 | To do that, click the Tables button, and
then choose Save Fields as a New Table.
| | 03:02 | Then you type the name, in this case
I'll call it Dur and Work because I've got
| | 03:09 | the % Complete and % Work Complete, and then click OK.
| | 03:13 | Now when I go back up to the Tables dropdown menu,
you see a couple of things.
| | 03:19 | There's a Custom heading and that shows
this custom table that I've created,
| | 03:24 | and there's the Built-In heading
that shows all the built-in tables.
| | 03:27 | So it's easy to see the new tables
you've created versus the ones that you've
| | 03:31 | perhaps modified, but that come with Project.
| | 03:34 | You can add, remove, or rearrange the
columns in any table whether it's built-in
| | 03:39 | or one you customized.
| | 03:41 | The changes you make to the table
remain in place until you make more changes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Changing the settings for columns in a table| 00:01 | The columns in a table are amenable to
displaying the text they contain in different ways.
| | 00:05 | You can change the heading that appears,
wrap the heading text to fit the column
| | 00:09 | width, align the text, and more.
| | 00:11 | So in this view, we are going to look
at the Start column and see what we can
| | 00:16 | do with column settings.
| | 00:17 | To get to those settings, right-click
the column heading, and then choose Field
| | 00:22 | Settings on the Shortcut menu.
| | 00:23 | The first thing that you see in the
Field Settings dialog box is that the Field
| | 00:29 | name is in the first box.
| | 00:31 | You can actually change the field
in a column just by clicking the
| | 00:34 | down arrow and choosing the field that you want.
| | 00:36 | In this case, we are going to leave it as Start.
| | 00:40 | The other thing you can do is that initially,
the column heading is the name of
| | 00:44 | the field, but you can make that
anything you want by putting a title in.
| | 00:51 | In this case, I am going to call it Current Start.
| | 00:54 | And if I click OK, you'll see that
the new name appears in the heading.
| | 00:58 | I am going to open up the
Field Settings dialog box again.
| | 01:02 | Another thing you can do is you
can align the title in the Title Box.
| | 01:06 | So right now it's set to left, but you
can choose center or right if you want.
| | 01:11 | We'll set it to Center.
| | 01:13 | The other thing you can do is you
can align the values in the cells.
| | 01:17 | That's the align data box.
And that's set to Left here.
| | 01:21 | But for example, let's say you have a
Yes/No field, you might want to align
| | 01:26 | that to center so the Yes/No are
away from the other values in the table.
| | 01:30 | There is the Width box, and you can set a
number in here to define the width of the column.
| | 01:36 | But that's not really the best way to do it.
| | 01:38 | If you want to make sure that the
values in the column all appear, just click
| | 01:43 | the Best Fit button, and then the
column will either get wider or narrower to
| | 01:48 | show all the values in that column.
| | 01:51 | Of course, there's another way that
you can change the width of the column to
| | 01:55 | show values and that's to point to
the divider in between two column
| | 01:58 | headings, and you can drag to the right
to make the column wider or drag to
| | 02:04 | left to make it narrower.
| | 02:07 | Going back to the Field Settings dialog box one
more time, you can see Header Text Wrapping.
| | 02:13 | And what that does is that will wrap the
header text depending on the width of the column.
| | 02:18 | So that's turned on.
| | 02:20 | So when I go back to the column and
then make it narrower, the heading is
| | 02:24 | going to change to Wrap.
| | 02:28 | So let's say I make this column a
little narrower, and now you can see that the
| | 02:32 | heading is on two lines.
| | 02:33 | Now one other thing you can do is you
can actually wrap the values in cells in
| | 02:39 | the table, and that's kind of like what
you see right now with the task names.
| | 02:43 | So you can see the task names are
wrapped onto multiple rows if they are long,
| | 02:48 | and they stay on one row if they're short.
| | 02:50 | You can do that in any column you want.
| | 02:53 | So let's say I insert a column, and
I am going to choose Constraint Type.
| | 03:00 | And then I right-click the column heading
and choose Wrap Text.
| | 03:04 | When I do that, you can see that
it wraps so that the entire value is
| | 03:10 | visible given the width of the column.
| | 03:12 | If I make the column wider, then
it will change the wrapping, so it will
| | 03:17 | just take up the number of rows that it needs.
| | 03:19 | In this case, it goes to two rows.
| | 03:21 | If I make it narrower again,
it will go back to three rows.
| | 03:26 | So you can still always see the entire value.
| | 03:29 | One way to tell that that's turned on,
if you right-click, you'll see that the
| | 03:33 | Wrap Text icon has a green border around it.
| | 03:37 | So that's how you change how column
headings and column data look and act.
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| Displaying two views at the same time| 00:00 | When you build your task list, a
single Gantt Chart View might be best.
| | 00:05 | But most of the time, you want to see
the entire project as well as specific
| | 00:09 | details for a task, resource, or assignment.
| | 00:13 | The Details pane displays a second view
in the bottom-half of the Project window,
| | 00:17 | so you can see detail about the tasks
or resources you select in the top pane.
| | 00:23 | The initial view you see in Project is
the Timeline View in the top, and the
| | 00:27 | Gantt Chart View in the bottom.
| | 00:29 | But if you want to see those details,
you want to display the Details pane.
| | 00:33 | So to do that, on the View Tab, go
over to Split View section and turn on the
| | 00:39 | Details checkbox, and then Project
hides the Timeline pane, and it shows the
| | 00:45 | Details pane here in the bottom-half of the window.
| | 00:47 | So the interesting thing about the
Details pane is when I select a task or
| | 00:52 | resource or assignment in the top view,
the values for that task appear in the
| | 00:57 | Details pane in the bottom-half of the window.
| | 00:59 | If I click a different task in the top,
I'll see the information for that task.
| | 01:05 | So that way, you can see the high-level
view of the Project as well as the
| | 01:09 | details about specific tasks or resources.
| | 01:12 | So that the window doesn't get too
complicated, you have to choose between
| | 01:17 | seeing the timeline view and the Details pane.
| | 01:20 | So you can see that if I click the
Timeline checkbox, the timeline comes back,
| | 01:25 | but the Details pane hides, and if I click
the Details checkbox, the Timeline disappears.
| | 01:33 | Now another thing you can do is you can
choose the view that you see in the Details pane.
| | 01:38 | Just click the down arrow, and
you can choose what you want.
| | 01:41 | In this case, I'm going to choose the
Task Details Form, and that chose a little
| | 01:46 | bit more than the task form.
| | 01:47 | Now one thing, when you have two views
displayed like this, you have to be a
| | 01:53 | little bit careful when you want to apply a new view.
| | 01:56 | You have to make sure that the right pane is active.
| | 01:59 | So for example, if I want to change
the view that appears in the top-half,
| | 02:05 | I want to click somewhere in the
top-half of the Project window.
| | 02:08 | You can always tell which view you're looking at
by looking at the label over the Format Tab.
| | 02:14 | So here it says Gantt Chart tools, and that
tells me that the Gantt Chart View is active.
| | 02:20 | If I click down in the task form, you can
see that that label changes to Task Form tools.
| | 02:25 | So I'll go back, and click in the Gantt Chart again
because that's the one that I want to change.
| | 02:31 | If I want to apply a different view,
I click the down-arrow and choose the
| | 02:35 | other view that I want.
| | 02:36 | Now another thing you can do is when
you have these two views displayed, you
| | 02:40 | can also change how much of the window is
devoted to the top view or the Details pane.
| | 02:46 | And to do that, you point to this
horizontal divider until you get the
| | 02:50 | two-headed arrow, you can drag the
divider down to make the Task Details Form
| | 02:55 | a little bit shorter, and the Gantt Chart
View in the top pane a little bit taller.
| | 03:00 | Now there's another way you can
actually display two views in your Project window,
| | 03:06 | and that's actually to create a second window.
| | 03:09 | That's actually a really good idea
if what you want to look at is two
| | 03:13 | different parts of the same Project,
because you can't really do that in a
| | 03:18 | single view in this one window.
| | 03:20 | So to do that, you click New Window.
| | 03:23 | In this case, if there were more than
one project open, you could select the
| | 03:27 | project that you want.
| | 03:29 | But in this case, we just have
the one project, so that's fine.
| | 03:33 | And what I can do is I can decide
which view that I want to see.
| | 03:37 | So I'll pick the Task Usage View, and then click OK.
| | 03:42 | Now I've got a second window, and
you can tell that by looking up here, and
| | 03:47 | you see that the project name has a
colon and a 1, and that shows that there's
| | 03:52 | more than one window open.
| | 03:53 | If you want to see both windows at
the same time, over here in the Windows section,
| | 03:58 | click Arrange All, and now you'll see
the one window in the bottom, and
| | 04:05 | it says TwoViews:1, and the other window
is in the top, and it says TwoViews:2.
| | 04:11 | You can also drag the corners and the
sides of these to reposition them and
| | 04:16 | resize them just like you would any
other multiple window in a program.
| | 04:20 | What's great about displaying two
views is you can see the big picture of
| | 04:24 | your Project in the top view and details
about specific tasks or resources in
| | 04:29 | the Details pane.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Timeline view| 00:00 | The timeline is great for
distilling information about a project.
| | 00:04 | You can emphasize a few important
tasks or add key milestones as callouts.
| | 00:09 | The timeline also provides an easy
way to adjust the dates you see in the
| | 00:13 | primary view in Project.
| | 00:14 | So here is the Timeline View up
in the top of the Project window.
| | 00:18 | If you don't see the view, go to the
View Tab, and make sure to turn on the
| | 00:23 | Timeline checkbox, and then
you'll see the timeline as it is here.
| | 00:27 | One of the great things about the timeline
is it shows the project start date
| | 00:31 | at the beginning in the left side of the bar,
and the finish date at the right side.
| | 00:37 | So here you see your entire project in
one simple view, and it's also great for
| | 00:42 | highlighting things about your project.
| | 00:44 | So you can highlight summary task,
things like phases, here's the Planning Move,
| | 00:51 | the design and construction phase.
| | 00:52 | But you can also emphasize specific tasks,
so maybe the move or drafting the budget.
| | 00:59 | It's really easy to add things to the timeline.
| | 01:02 | So let's say we want to add a few tasks
to emphasize them and keep our eyes on
| | 01:07 | what's going on with them.
| | 01:08 | Just right-click the task, in this case,
Finalize Lease, and choose Add to
| | 01:13 | Timeline, and you see the bar appear here in the Timeline.
| | 01:17 | I'm going to add a couple of other things.
| | 01:19 | I'm going to add the Planning Complete milestone,
just right-click it, choose
| | 01:25 | Add to Timeline, and do the same thing with
the Open House near the end of the project.
| | 01:33 | Now a couple of things to notice;
| | 01:35 | the milestone that I added shows up
as a milestone on the timeline.
| | 01:40 | But the Open House, that's a task,
it's a short one, but it's a task, and it
| | 01:45 | shows up as this narrow little bar,
and there's no information.
| | 01:49 | So that might actually be better as a callout.
| | 01:51 | You can change the format to a callout or a taskbar.
| | 01:55 | Just click the thing that you want to change,
in this case, it's the taskbar,
| | 02:01 | and you can see Display as Bar is highlighted
because it's showing as a bar right now.
| | 02:05 | If I want to change it to a callout, I
click Display as Callout, and now you've
| | 02:11 | got a little callout box which is much better.
| | 02:13 | You can see the name and you can see the date.
| | 02:15 | You can also create new tasks right in the timeline.
| | 02:20 | To do that, go to the Insert section,
and you can see you can add a task, you
| | 02:25 | can add a task as a callout, kind of like the
Open House here, or you can add a milestone.
| | 02:31 | In this case, I'm going to add a milestone.
| | 02:33 | And a Task Information dialog box opens,
it's the same one that opens if you're
| | 02:38 | going to create a task or edit a task in other views.
| | 02:42 | So I'm going to type the name.
In this case, it's a Construction Payment.
| | 02:45 | It's a milestone, so it's got its duration of 0 days,
and the only thing I have
| | 02:52 | to do is give it a start date, August 26, and click OK.
And there is the milestone.
| | 02:59 | To remove a task from the timeline, it's really easy.
| | 03:02 | Just right-click it and choose Remove from Timeline.
| | 03:06 | It disappears in the timeline, but it's still in the project.
| | 03:10 | So it will be down in the Gantt Chart.
| | 03:13 | The timeline is a really great view for
communicating to a lot of audiences that
| | 03:17 | really don't need all the detail of a Gantt Chart.
| | 03:20 | So you can copy it to other places.
| | 03:23 | To do that, on the Format Tab, click Copy Timeline.
| | 03:26 | You can see you can get it right into
an email or let's say you want to put
| | 03:31 | it into a PowerPoint slide, just choose For
Presentation, and it copies it to the clipboard.
| | 03:37 | Now you can switch over to
PowerPoint and paste it into a slide.
| | 03:41 | The other thing that timeline does,
you can see that there is this box.
| | 03:45 | That actually controls the date range
that appears in the Gantt Chart View.
| | 03:50 | So if I drag this box, you can
see that the date range changes.
| | 03:58 | I can also change the end date by
dragging to the left or to the right,
| | 04:05 | and I can change the start date of that date
range by dragging to the left or right.
| | 04:11 | By the way, if dragging doesn't work
on the Format Tab, make sure this Pan &
| | 04:16 | Zoom checkbox is turned on because
that's what allows you to drag this box
| | 04:21 | around and also change the earliest,
or latest date of the date range.
| | 04:26 | I am just going to get these
taskbars a little bit more in view.
| | 04:30 | There is one other way that you can
change the date range very easily.
| | 04:34 | I'm going to make sure that the Gantt
Chart View is active, click in it to make
| | 04:38 | it active, and you can see it is
because I've got Gantt Chart tools up here.
| | 04:43 | Now I go down to the lower-right corner
of the window, and you see there's this Zoom slider.
| | 04:49 | So if I drag to the right, it zooms in.
| | 04:52 | You can see that the task bars are
getting longer because I'm getting into
| | 04:56 | smaller timeframes that are shown on
the screen, or if I drag to left, the
| | 05:02 | taskbars get shorter because the timeframes are shorter.
| | 05:06 | So I'm zooming out.
| | 05:08 | The timeline is a great way to look at
a project from a high level, and it's
| | 05:12 | also an easy way to change the date
range you see in the Main Views timescale.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sorting tasks and resources| 00:00 | In Project, you can sort tasks, resources,
and assignments in several ways to
| | 00:06 | make them easier to search for.
| | 00:08 | You might sort tasks by duration when
you're looking for tasks to shorten, or
| | 00:12 | sort resources by their pay rates
when you're trying to reduce costs.
| | 00:17 | When you sort tasks, it's better
to turn off the Summary tasks.
| | 00:21 | So to do that, click the Format Tab,
and turn off Project Summary Task and
| | 00:27 | Summary Tasks, and now you have
all your work tasks in the Project.
| | 00:32 | To sort these tasks, go back to the View Tab,
and click Sort, and you can
| | 00:38 | see that there are several built-in sorts.
| | 00:40 | So let's sort by start date.
| | 00:43 | Now you can see the start dates go in chronological order.
| | 00:47 | But if you have a cost-cutting initiative
going on, you might want to sort by costs.
| | 00:52 | So go back to the Sort, choose by Cost.
| | 00:55 | I have to drag over, so we can see the
Cost column, and now you can see the cost
| | 01:01 | goes from largest to smallest.
| | 01:04 | If you want to get the tasks back
into their original order, on the Sort
| | 01:08 | dropdown menu, choose by ID
and then it sorts by the task ID.
| | 01:13 | So now the task IDs are in sequential order.
| | 01:15 | But you can also sort directly in a column heading.
| | 01:19 | To do that, click the down arrow here
in the Duration column, and you can see
| | 01:24 | that a menu appears, and up at the top,
there's Sort Smallest to Largest, and
| | 01:28 | Sort Largest to Smallest.
| | 01:30 | If I want to find the task with
the longest duration in my project to see
| | 01:34 | the best ones to shorten, I'll
choose Sort Largest to Smallest.
| | 01:39 | And now you can see it starts with
the longest durations, and works its way
| | 01:43 | down to shorter ones.
| | 01:44 | The option you see varies on the column.
| | 01:47 | So if I click the down arrow in the
Start column, it sort earliest to latest
| | 01:52 | and sort latest to earliest because they're dates.
| | 01:54 | You can also sort by more than one criteria.
In fact, up to three.
| | 01:58 | So to do that, click the down arrow
on the Sort button, and choose Sort by.
| | 02:05 | Now we already have the Sort by Duration in
place, but let's say we want to add another test.
| | 02:10 | In this case, duration is descending,
so we've got the longest durations.
| | 02:13 | So we also want to do by start date.
| | 02:16 | So click the down arrow, start to type in
the field name, and when I see it, I click it.
| | 02:22 | In this case, we want it to be ascending,
because we want to see the earliest dates first.
| | 02:28 | So when I click Sort, now I still have
the duration sorted from longest to shortest.
| | 02:34 | But you can see I have several tasks
with 10 days duration, and their start
| | 02:40 | dates are in chronological order.
| | 02:43 | Sorting also works for resources.
So let's look at the resource sheet.
| | 02:47 | In this case, the resources in
this project are a little bit jumbled.
| | 02:51 | So we've got different types of resources together,
and it needs to be cleaned up a little bit.
| | 02:56 | We can do that by sorting.
| | 02:58 | So the first thing to do is on the View Tab,
click the Sort button, and choose Sort by.
| | 03:04 | It's sorted by ID at this point, but what we want
to do is first we want to sort by type.
| | 03:11 | So I find the Type field and choose that.
| | 03:15 | In this case, we want the Descending option
because we want work resources first,
| | 03:20 | and then the other types.
| | 03:22 | But then the second one is we want it
to be by name, and we want it in
| | 03:29 | alphabetical order, so we leave
the Ascending option in place.
| | 03:32 | In this case, we want to permanently renumber this list,
so that the resources will stay in order.
| | 03:39 | So to do that, turn on the Permanently
renumber resources checkbox. Then click Sort.
| | 03:45 | Now you see the work resources
are altogether followed by material, and
| | 03:50 | cost, and they're in alphabetical order within their types.
| | 03:54 | But there's one other thing that you
have to do, and that's to go back into the
| | 03:58 | Sort by Box, because that Permanently
renumber resources checkbox is still
| | 04:03 | turned on and that means any other
time you sort the resources, it would
| | 04:08 | permanently renumber,
and that's not what you want.
| | 04:10 | So turn that off, and then just
click Cancel, and now you're all set.
| | 04:15 | So now that you see how easy it is
to sort in Project, go ahead, and sort
| | 04:20 | your project information to find what
you need to improve your schedule or
| | 04:24 | resolve issues.
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| Grouping tasks and resources| 00:00 | Grouping helps you categorize
tasks, resources, or assignments.
| | 00:05 | When you group items, the summary rows for
each group roll up values for all the items below.
| | 00:11 | For example, if you group tasks by
the teams that do the work, you can see
| | 00:16 | how much you're spending on labor for
employees, contractors, and third-party vendors.
| | 00:21 | So to apply a group, go to the View Tab, and
then choose the down arrow in the Group box.
| | 00:28 | In this case, I'm going to group by Resource,
and now you can see that there is
| | 00:33 | a group for each resource in the Project.
| | 00:37 | These summary rows with the yellow
highlighting show the different resources
| | 00:41 | in the Project, and underneath you see the
tasks that resource is assigned to.
| | 00:46 | I'm going to apply the Cost Table.
| | 00:53 | Here you can see with the Cost
Table applied, I can see how much I'm
| | 00:57 | spending on the different resources in this project.
| | 01:00 | Actually, the office manager is a good example.
| | 01:03 | You can see that the office manager,
all the different assignments the office
| | 01:07 | manager has totals up to $38,640.
| | 01:10 | Now if you want to apply a group and
you don't see it in this dropdown menu,
| | 01:17 | you can go to More Groups.
| | 01:19 | That opens the More Groups dialog box
and you can choose whatever group you
| | 01:23 | want, and click Apply to see that group.
| | 01:26 | If you want to get rid of the group,
just click the down-arrow and choose
| | 01:31 | No Group at the very top, and now
you're back to the ungrouped list.
| | 01:35 | You can also set up a multilevel group.
| | 01:39 | So for example, if you want to crash
tasks to shorten the schedule, you want
| | 01:44 | the tasks on the critical path, and
you also want the longest durations.
| | 01:49 | You can actually apply two levels of groups.
| | 01:52 | So in this case, we're going to start
by grouping by critical, which I'm going
| | 01:58 | to go to the More Groups dialog box,
choose Critical, and click Apply.
| | 02:03 | And now you can see Critical: No.
| | 02:05 | If I drag down to the bottom, there
are a few tasks that are Critical: Yes.
| | 02:10 | So those are the tasks that are critical
and I want to look at for crashing.
| | 02:14 | Well, I also want to group by duration.
| | 02:16 | I'm actually going to go and change the table.
| | 02:19 | I'm going to go back to the Summary table,
so I can see the duration.
| | 02:25 | Get back down to the bottom of the
list and look at my critical tasks.
| | 02:28 | So now, to create this group, go back
into the More Groups dialog box, and in
| | 02:35 | this case, I'm going to copy the Critical group.
| | 02:39 | I'm going to put in a new name.
| | 02:41 | It's going to be Critical Duration,
and I've already got the Group By:Critical
| | 02:47 | because we copied the Critical group in the first place.
| | 02:50 | But now, I want to group by Duration.
| | 02:57 | In this case, we want descending order
because we want the duration to be longest to shortest.
| | 03:03 | Now one of the things about grouping
by duration is if you think about it,
| | 03:08 | tasks can come in all sorts of durations,
and initially, a group is set up to do distinct values.
| | 03:15 | So you would end up with just lots and
lots of different groups for duration.
| | 03:18 | The solution to that is to define intervals.
| | 03:22 | To do that, you click the Define Group Intervals button.
| | 03:27 | You can see the 'Group on:' is set to Each Value,
and that's where you're going
| | 03:32 | to get all those different groups.
| | 03:33 | But you don't really want that,
so you click the down arrow.
| | 03:37 | In this case, I'm going to Group on: Weeks.
| | 03:40 | The 'Start at:' box tells you where you're going to start.
| | 03:43 | So in this case, I'm going to start at 1,
and that says that the first group is
| | 03:48 | going to be anything less than 1 week.
| | 03:51 | The 'Group interval:' says how long the interval is.
| | 03:54 | So in this case, I want 2 week intervals,
so I change that to 2.
| | 03:59 | Click OK and save the group.
| | 04:02 | So now I've got this Critical Duration
group ready, and when I click Apply, you
| | 04:08 | can see I've got the top-level group
of the Critical: No and Critical: Yes.
| | 04:13 | If I go down to the bottom, see that
there are actually two groups for Critical:
| | 04:18 | Yes, and the one is the duration group
of -1 week to 1 week, shows anything
| | 04:25 | less than 1 week, and then the next group is
1 to 3 weeks, so we've got the 2 weeks interval.
| | 04:31 | Grouping project information comes in
handy in all sorts of ways while you're
| | 04:35 | planning and managing your project.
| | 04:38 | In addition, a group rolls up the values
of the items within it, so you can see
| | 04:42 | totals like cost or work.
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| Filtering tasks and resources| 00:00 | Project Filters display the information you
care about and screen out what isn't important.
| | 00:06 | Project comes with a bunch of built-in
filters like the incomplete tasks filter,
| | 00:10 | which shows tasks that aren't done yet.
| | 00:13 | Some filters include prompts like the
Using Resource Filter, which asks which
| | 00:17 | resource you want to filter by.
| | 00:19 | Auto Filter is an easy way to set up a filter on the fly
and you can also create your own filters.
| | 00:25 | So to work with filters go to the View tab.
| | 00:28 | Then click the down arrow in the Filter box.
| | 00:31 | So in this example let's try applying the Critical Filter.
| | 00:35 | Now you can see only the tasks that are
critical appear in the view, scroll to
| | 00:42 | the right here, and you can see all the tasks are critical.
| | 00:45 | Let me go back and I'm going to turn off the Filter.
| | 00:48 | I'll click the down arrow and choose No Filter.
| | 00:50 | I'll choose another Filter, in this case, Using Resource.
| | 00:54 | Now one of the things you see here is
Using Resource has an ellipses after it
| | 00:59 | and that means it's going to ask for some information.
| | 01:02 | So I'm going to click that.
| | 01:03 | Sure enough, there is a box that appears
and it says. Show Tasks Using.
| | 01:08 | So I click the down arrow and in this
case I want to filter by the Office Manager.
| | 01:15 | So I click OK and now you can see all the tasks
in the list have the Office Manager assigned.
| | 01:23 | If you click the down arrow and you
don't see the filter you want, choose More
| | 01:28 | Filters and the More Filters dialog box opens.
| | 01:32 | You can choose whatever filter you want from this list.
| | 01:36 | There're actually a couple of good
Filters that you might want to use.
| | 01:40 | Should Start By, Should Start and Finish By,
Slipped Late Progress, and Slipping Tasks are all great
| | 01:48 | when you want to see the progress,
you want to find late tasks, tasks that
| | 01:52 | should've started by a date that haven't or tasks
that haven't made as much progress as they should.
| | 01:58 | So those are really great filters to keep in mind.
| | 02:01 | When you want to select a filter just
click it in the list and click Apply.
| | 02:06 | Now one thing to note, there is Apply and Highlight.
| | 02:10 | If you click Apply, Project only shows the
things that passed the Filter and it hides the rest.
| | 02:17 | But you still want to see those,
then use Highlight instead.
| | 02:20 | Then what it does is it highlights the things that pass
the test and leaves the other ones just plain.
| | 02:28 | Now one thing to keep in mind about
Filters is if you make changes to the
| | 02:32 | Project Microsoft Project does not automatically
reapply the filter to only show
| | 02:38 | the things that pass the filter.
| | 02:40 | So if do things like change resource
assignments or change the duration,
| | 02:46 | the filter might not be up-to-date.
| | 02:48 | So the easiest way to reapply a filter
is to press Ctrl+F3 and that reapplies
| | 02:55 | the filter and it'll use the current values
to either display or hide things.
| | 03:00 | There's another way that you can apply filters
and that's right in column heading in the table.
| | 03:05 | So in this case click the down arrow
for Start and then point to Filters.
| | 03:11 | You can see a menu with all sorts
of ways to filter on the Start date.
| | 03:15 | For example, I could choose Next Quarter
and that'll filter at the tasks that
| | 03:21 | are scheduled for the next quarter.
| | 03:23 | Now when I do that, you can see that
things are filtered, because we've got this
| | 03:28 | little funnel here up in the column heading.
| | 03:30 | Also, the Status bar says Auto Filter Applied
and that tells you that this Auto Filter is in place.
| | 03:38 | You actually see that there's a filter applied,
because I've also got a filter up here in the Filter box.
| | 03:44 | If I want to remove a filter, I can click
the Filter icon here and choose Clear
| | 03:52 | Filter from Start and the funnel
goes away and so does the Filter.
| | 03:56 | You can also build your own filters.
| | 03:59 | Let's say you want to filter your project for critical
tasks that are longer than four days.
| | 04:04 | I'm going to go up, click the down arrow,
and I'm going to apply the Critical Filter.
| | 04:08 | But what I want to do is I actually
want to copy this to create my own filters.
| | 04:14 | So go back here and to choose More Filters
to open the More Filters dialog box
| | 04:20 | and I'm going to copy this Filter.
| | 04:25 | In this case I'll name it Critical4days.
| | 04:27 | Now I can see because we copied a filter we
already have the first filter test in place.
| | 04:35 | So all we really have to do is duration.
| | 04:37 | In the Field Name cell click that,
click the down arrow, find the Duration
| | 04:45 | field, and add it to the Field Name.
| | 04:48 | In the Test cell we want that to be
Is greater than or equal to.
| | 04:56 | The Values cell we want to be 4 days.
| | 04:58 | So we put in 4 days and before I actually save
this I just wanted to point out a few things.
| | 05:05 | There are a couple of different tests.
| | 05:06 | You do all of the basic comparisons.
| | 05:09 | So Does not equal or Equals, you've got
Greater than Less than, that kind of thing.
| | 05:16 | Is within and Is not within Is for a Range
so if you want a test for a date range.
| | 05:22 | In the last three contains does not contain
and contains exactly are for text strings.
| | 05:29 | So you can look for tasks that
have the word design in their names.
| | 05:33 | But in this case Is greater than
or equal to is exactly what we want.
| | 05:37 | Now the other thing is there's this check box
Show related summary rows.
| | 05:42 | Sometimes you want to see
them and sometimes you don't.
| | 05:45 | In this case, I don't want to.
| | 05:47 | So I am going to turn that checkbox off
and that means it's just going to show
| | 05:51 | the work tasks, not the summary tasks.
| | 05:55 | I save that filter and click Apply.
| | 05:58 | Now you can see that the filter is set up
so that it only shows the Critical
| | 06:04 | Tasks that are four days or longer.
| | 06:07 | Filtering is a great way to focus on
just the information you want to see.
| | 06:12 | You can use built-in filters or build your own.
| | 06:15 | If you create your own Filters, the
easiest approach is to copy of built-in
| | 06:19 | filter that has some of the tests
that you want and then add to it.
| | 06:23 | It's as easy as that.
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| Modifying task bar styles and task bar text| 00:00 | Taskbar formatting makes it easy to
emphasize information by showing Critical
| | 00:04 | Tasks in red and Noncritical Tasks in blue.
| | 00:08 | We can also format individual taskbars
if you want to highlight key tasks like
| | 00:13 | milestones that trigger payments.
| | 00:15 | Project actually has some taskbar
formatting that's right on the ribbon.
| | 00:19 | So for example, on the Format tab the
Critical Tasks checkbox is turned on and
| | 00:25 | that shows Critical Tasks in red
taskbars and Noncritical Tasks in blue.
| | 00:30 | If turn off the checkbox all
the taskbars change to blue.
| | 00:36 | Turn it back on and now I can
see all the Critical Tasks again.
| | 00:39 | You can also format Bar Styles and
that's a style for a whole category of bars.
| | 00:46 | So to do that click the Format
button and choose Bar Styles.
| | 00:51 | That opens the Bar Styles
dialog box and its rather imposing.
| | 00:57 | There's quite a bit here, but it's
really not so bad when you look at it.
| | 01:00 | So let's say that we want to format the Critical Tasks.
| | 01:06 | I select the Critical Row in the table
and now down at the bottom on this Bar's
| | 01:11 | tab I have the Settings for Critical Tasks.
| | 01:14 | But you can do things like you can
choose a Shape for the Start of the end.
| | 01:19 | In this case I'm going to choose some triangles
and you can see a Preview up in the table.
| | 01:28 | You can also change the color if you want.
So for example, you can make it a red
| | 01:36 | And the middle section, that's the middle of the taskbar.
| | 01:40 | So if you want to change the color,
you can choose that color as well and you
| | 01:45 | can see that changes the middle of the taskbar.
| | 01:49 | You can also change the Shape.
| | 01:50 | Well, the Shape is
actually the width of the bar.
| | 01:54 | You can really choose between a full width,
a partial width, and then a very narrow bar.
| | 01:59 | The narrow bars are great for things like Progress
and you can see that up in the table here.
| | 02:04 | The Progress bar has a narrow bar and it's up at the top.
| | 02:07 | One thing to keep in mind, if you're
going to use narrow bars, you want those to
| | 02:11 | be near the bottom of this list in the table,
because Project applies these
| | 02:16 | Taskbar from the top of the table to the bottom.
| | 02:19 | That means that you have a full width
bar that's at the top, you can see the
| | 02:24 | entire bar and then you can see the narrower
bars overlaid on top of the full width bars.
| | 02:29 | If you go the other way around it in the
narrower bars will be hidden behind the full width.
| | 02:34 | So in this case we're going to keep the full width bar.
| | 02:37 | Another thing you can do, if you think
you're going to print to black and white,
| | 02:40 | you can always choose a pattern and
that way you can choose like diagonal hash
| | 02:45 | or vertical bars that'll show up
differently on black and white printer.
| | 02:50 | The great thing about these Bar Styles
is that a project automatically takes
| | 02:54 | care of applying them if a task changes category.
| | 02:58 | So for example if a Noncritical Task
becomes Critical it's going to change to
| | 03:03 | whatever formatting we have here.
| | 03:06 | Another thing you can do is you
can show text around a taskbar.
| | 03:10 | On the Text tab you can see right now
that Resource Names are on the right side
| | 03:14 | of taskbars, but in this case I can let's
say choose, I'm going to go to Resource Initials instead.
| | 03:23 | The nice thing about Initials is that they're shorter.
| | 03:26 | So you can still see who's assigned to a task
in the timescale, but without taking up as much room.
| | 03:33 | If you want you could also put
Start on the top of the Taskbar.
| | 03:37 | So when I click OK, you can see those changes.
| | 03:41 | In this case it's just on Critical Tasks,
because that's the Taskbar style
| | 03:46 | that we defined. You can see there is an
initial and can also see the date at the top.
| | 03:52 | Another thing to remember is that this Bar Style
formatting applies only to the Active View.
| | 03:57 | This is the Gantt Chart View so these
changes will only appear in the Gantt Chart.
| | 04:02 | If you apply a different view like Tracking Gantt
you won't see these same changes.
| | 04:07 | Not the other thing you can do
is to format individual taskbars.
| | 04:12 | Just change one taskbar that you
want to emphasize for some reason.
| | 04:16 | So let's say we want to
format the Install phone system.
| | 04:19 | To do that go to the Format tab,
click the down arrow, and choose Bar.
| | 04:26 | You get the Format Bar dialog box, which
is very similar to the Bar Styles just
| | 04:32 | not the whole table, because
we're just formatting this one bar.
| | 04:35 | So you still have your choices of start middle and end.
| | 04:39 | For example, I just want to change this to green
and we'll leave the Bar Text alone.
| | 04:44 | But when I click OK that
change occurs right in the taskbar.
| | 04:50 | If the only change you want to make is color
there's actually a shortcut for formatting a single bar.
| | 04:55 | That's to right-click it and now you
see this little toolbar that pops up and
| | 04:59 | it's got a color that you can choose.
| | 05:02 | So click the down arrow and
you can choose a theme color.
| | 05:06 | That's a color coordinated set of colors
that you can apply or you just choose
| | 05:10 | a standard color and if you click more
colors you can choose whatever color you want.
| | 05:16 | In this case, I'm then just apply some yellow
and the color changes automatically.
| | 05:21 | Formatting a Taskbar lets you emphasize
entire categories of tasks like Critical Tasks
| | 05:26 | or you can format individual bars to highlight them.
| | 05:31 | It's an effective way to show off
the information you want to see.
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| Modifying task bar layout| 00:00 | Adjusting how tasks are laid out in the timescale is helpful.
| | 00:04 | Particularly, when task link lines look like spaghetti.
| | 00:07 | Layout options also let you change the date format,
the height of bars, and how splits appear.
| | 00:13 | To format the layout of the timescale
in the Gantt Chart go to the Format tab,
| | 00:19 | and then click the Layout button.
| | 00:21 | The first thing you see in the Layout
dialog box is three options for how link
| | 00:26 | lines appear. The default option is kind of
like an upside down L and it's nice and clean.
| | 00:32 | So you can still see the links, but
there's just not too much going on.
| | 00:37 | The only problem is sometimes the
vertical parts of the link lines overlap.
| | 00:41 | So another option if you want to get rid of
the overlapping is to choose this S shape.
| | 00:46 | If I apply that you can see that the
Taskbars then go from the ends of one bar
| | 00:53 | to the end of the other.
| | 00:55 | And they don't overlap as much.
| | 00:58 | Another option if you want to focus on
the tasks and when they occur is to not
| | 01:02 | show the link lines at all.
| | 01:04 | So in that case you would choose this
no link line option, but usually you'll
| | 01:10 | use the L-shaped one.
| | 01:13 | Another thing you can do is you can change
the Date format that appears on Taskbars.
| | 01:18 | This abbreviated one is nice,
because it doesn't take up a lot of room.
| | 01:22 | But if for some reason you wanted more information,
| | 01:25 | for example, you could choose the date and
then you'll see that format on the Taskbars.
| | 01:37 | Another setting you can choose is the Bar height.
| | 01:39 | Twelve is the default number and that
shows a Taskbar height as shown here.
| | 01:45 | If you want them higher just choose a bigger number.
| | 01:48 | Another good setting is to Round bars to hold days.
| | 01:51 | That way really short tasks that are
one or two hours and are barely visible in
| | 01:56 | the timescale will just have a little more substance.
| | 01:59 | The other setting that's turned on is Show bar splits.
| | 02:03 | That means that it'll actually show a split in the task.
| | 02:06 | So I want to Click OK and you can see that
the height of those bars got a little bigger.
| | 02:12 | Now I am going to add a Split.
| | 02:14 | So I go to the Task tab, click the Split icon,
and when I drag the middle of this bar,
| | 02:22 | just ignore this little warning here, and Add the Split.
| | 02:27 | You see that there's a dotted line
and that indicates the task is Split.
| | 02:32 | Later on we'll talk little bit more about
how you add Splits and why you want to do that.
| | 02:37 | Adjusting layout of tasks is helpful,
mainly when task link lines become overwhelming.
| | 02:42 | You can choose various settings in Layout box
to make a scheduled easier to read.
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| Modifying text formatting| 00:00 | Text Styles format different categories of text
like row and column headings,
| | 00:05 | text around task bars, or the text for critical tasks.
| | 00:10 | You can change text formatting to make tables
more readable or to emphasize specific tasks.
| | 00:17 | You can also change the format for a
single text string to make it stand out.
| | 00:21 | So to format text styles go to the Format tab
and on the left side choose Text Styles.
| | 00:28 | Initially the Text Styles dialog box is set to Change All Text.
| | 00:31 | For example, if you want to leave your
reading glasses at home, you can just
| | 00:36 | change the font size to 12, and all
the text will change to a larger size.
| | 00:40 | But in this case we're going to select the Category.
| | 00:43 | For example, Milestone Tasks, and you
see all the usual suspects the font, the
| | 00:50 | font style, like italic, or bold, and the size.
| | 00:53 | So let say we're going to change the Milestones
to Italic and we will leave the size the way it is.
| | 00:59 | The Color box lets you change the color for text.
| | 01:02 | So click the down arrow and choose a Color;
keep in mind in dark colors are easier to see.
| | 01:09 | So I'm going to choose a dark green.
| | 01:11 | You can always look in the
sample to see what it looks like.
| | 01:14 | Now background color is actually the
shading of the cell behind the text.
| | 01:19 | So let's actually select Critical Tasks as the item to change.
| | 01:23 | Now what we're going to do is we're going to in
change the background color to a light orange.
| | 01:29 | Now when I click OK, you see that the
text changes, the Milestones are green
| | 01:35 | text in Italic, and the cells for Values for critical tasks
have this orange highlighting behind them.
| | 01:42 | So they really stand out in the table.
| | 01:45 | If you think you're going to print on a
black and white printer you can always
| | 01:49 | choose a background pattern behind your text,
but in general it's better to keep it a solid.
| | 01:54 | I am going to close the dialog box now.
| | 01:56 | You can also format individual text
and that's really easy to do.
| | 02:01 | So let's say we want to format the text for the open house.
| | 02:05 | Just right-click that sell and you see
this mini toolbar and you can change the font.
| | 02:11 | You can change the font size.
| | 02:13 | I'll change it to 12.
| | 02:15 | If you want to change the bold or italic
just click the icon you can change the
| | 02:20 | background color or the font color.
In this case, maybe blue.
| | 02:26 | It changes automatically.
| | 02:27 | So if you don't like what you see you
can just keep changing these settings
| | 02:31 | until you get what you want.
| | 02:33 | Formatting Text Styles or individual text
can highlight information that
| | 02:37 | you need to stand out.
| | 02:39 | Formatting different categories
can emphasize specific tasks and
| | 02:42 | formatting individual text emphasizes
important information that doesn't
| | 02:47 | fall into a category.
| | 02:48 | Like a task that the customer really cares about.
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8. Fine-Tuning the Project ScheduleReviewing the critical path| 00:00 | The Critical Path is the longest link
sequence of tasks in a project
| | 00:05 | and runs from the start of the project to the finish.
| | 00:08 | That means changes to start and finish
dates for tasks on the Critical Path
| | 00:13 | also change the Project Finish Date.
| | 00:15 | As you plan and manage projects
you will look at the Critical Path to see where
| | 00:20 | you can shorten the schedule or to watch for
delays that threatened to delay the entire project.
| | 00:25 | Fortunately, Project makes it easy
to keep an eye on the Critical Path.
| | 00:30 | Here in the Gantt Chart view it's really
easy to turn critical tasks on and off.
| | 00:35 | Just go to Format tab and you can see here
the Critical Tasks checkbox is turned on.
| | 00:42 | That's why you see critical tasks
in red and noncritical tasks in blue.
| | 00:46 | If you turn on the checkbox off everything changes
to blue and you can't see the Critical Tasks easily.
| | 00:54 | So turn the checkbox on and now you can see
red for Critical Tasks and blue for Noncritical.
| | 01:00 | The thing about Critical Tasks
is that they don't have any slack.
| | 01:05 | If a Critical Task delays so does the Project.
| | 01:08 | So there are a couple of ways you can see slack.
The first one is really easy.
| | 01:13 | Just turn on the Slack checkbox and now
if you go look at this noncritical task,
| | 01:18 | you can how this narrow black bar coming
off the back end of it. That is its slack.
| | 01:25 | If you want to see exactly how much
slack there is the easiest thing to do
| | 01:30 | is insert the total slack column.
| | 01:31 | Right-click the Column Heading, choose
Insert Column, and start to type the field name.
| | 01:38 | Then just choose Total Slack in the dropdown list.
| | 01:41 | Now you can see that the Critical Tasks
have 0 Slack as you would expect,
| | 01:46 | but here's a noncritical task.
| | 01:48 | It's bar is blue and it has slack of five days.
| | 01:52 | Here is another noncritical task
and it has slack of five days.
| | 01:56 | Let's look at how the Critical Task works.
| | 01:59 | So the Project has a finish date of September 3rd.
| | 02:03 | Well, here we're going to go down to
the Design Office Space task and it turns
| | 02:09 | out that task isn't going to take 15 days.
| | 02:11 | It's going to take 20.
| | 02:14 | So I change the Duration to 20 days.
| | 02:16 | Changing that changes its finish date
and it directly affects the finish date of
| | 02:22 | the project, which is now September 10.
| | 02:25 | So that's why the Critical Tasks are so important.
| | 02:28 | On the other hand let's look at a
noncritical task like Prepare drawings.
| | 02:32 | In this case Prepare drawings has a duration
of five days and it has slack of five days.
| | 02:39 | Let's say this one takes a little longer too.
It's going to be seven days.
| | 02:43 | So I put 7d in, press Enter.
| | 02:46 | Now you see the slack drops to 3 days.
| | 02:51 | However, if we go back up you can see
that the task date hasn't moved from that
| | 02:55 | September 10, because it's still a noncritical task.
| | 03:01 | You can tell its taskbar is still blue.
| | 03:03 | A really easy way to see all of the Critical Tasks
in your project is to apply the Critical Filter.
| | 03:09 | To do that go to the View tab, click the down arrow
in the Filter box, and choose Critical.
| | 03:16 | Now you can see all the tasks that are critical.
| | 03:19 | If you want to just see the work tasks
go to the Format tab and turn off the
| | 03:24 | Summary Task checkbox and now you can see
all the critical work tasks in your project.
| | 03:30 | If you need to shorten the schedule
these are the ones to look at.
| | 03:34 | Then if you want to go back to your full list,
you can go back to the View tab,
| | 03:39 | in the Filter box, click the down arrow,
and choose No Filter.
| | 03:43 | Now you can see Critical and Noncritical Tasks.
| | 03:46 | Project has several features for showing the Critical Path.
| | 03:50 | Use whichever one you want anytime you want.
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| Using the Task Inspector to review scheduling issues| 00:00 | It's important to identify and correct
scheduling problems quickly, which is
| | 00:05 | where the Task Inspector comes in.
| | 00:07 | Manually scheduled tasks are prone to
schedule problems, because Project doesn't
| | 00:11 | calculate their dates.
| | 00:13 | Red squiggly lines like the ones for
misspellings in Microsoft Word show
| | 00:18 | potential schedule problems in Project.
| | 00:20 | When you right-click a cell with a red
squiggly line, you can choose a command
| | 00:24 | to correct the problem or open the
Task Inspector to see what's going on and
| | 00:29 | then choose the corrective action you want.
| | 00:31 | In this schedule let's look at the
Present to management task.
| | 00:35 | It has red squiggly lines. So right-click the task.
| | 00:39 | Now on the shortcut menu you have some options.
| | 00:42 | For example, one thing is it's a manually scheduled task.
| | 00:47 | So one solution might be to switch it
to Auto Scheduled and you could choose
| | 00:51 | that on the shortcut menu.
In this case the other option is Respect Links.
| | 00:57 | It's linked to another task finish to start,
but it's not really respecting those links.
| | 01:02 | So in this case I'll choose that option
and now you can see the Project
| | 01:08 | reschedules the task so that the finish to start
is accurate and the red squiggly lines go away.
| | 01:15 | Identify costs is another task with a red squiggly line.
| | 01:18 | When I right-click this task on the shortcut menu
see this command Ignore Problems for This Task.
| | 01:25 | Well, in this case part of it is if you
look over the timescale you can see that
| | 01:30 | the manually scheduled summary task
finishes earlier than the subtasks.
| | 01:35 | So that shows it has a problem.
| | 01:38 | If you want you could ignore the problems
for this task by choosing Ignore
| | 01:42 | Problems for This Task on the shortcut menu.
| | 01:44 | But in this case we're going to go the Task Inspector.
| | 01:48 | So at the top I choose Fix in Task Inspector.
| | 01:53 | The Task Inspector pane opens up.
| | 01:56 | You can see at the top the problems
with this task are listed and then you actually
| | 02:00 | have the actions you can take to fix those problems.
| | 02:04 | One of the options is to extend the finish.
| | 02:08 | That is one of the problems, because here
the bracket finishes earlier than the subtask.
| | 02:13 | So by extending the finish everything
would match up and the problem would go away,
| | 02:17 | but in this case the better option might be to change
the dates, because it's a manually scheduled task.
| | 02:24 | By clicking Change Dates the bracket
moves so the start and finish dates match
| | 02:30 | the subtasks and squiggly lines go away.
| | 02:33 | The Task Inspector is useful for
finding and fixing scheduling problems.
| | 02:38 | Just look for those red squiggly lines.
| | 02:41 | You can right-click a task to choose
commands that can fix the problem
| | 02:45 | or you can open the Task Inspector to dig a
little deeper before you choose a repair option.
| | 02:50 | Keep in mind sometimes you have to
come up with your own solutions like
| | 02:54 | modifying resources assignments.
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| Splitting a task| 00:00 | When tasks overlap the assigned resources may not
have enough time available to get all their work done.
| | 00:07 | One possible solution is splitting tasks and assignments.
| | 00:11 | If a task is short you can split another task
to allow resources to jump onto
| | 00:17 | the short task, finish it, and go
back to wrap up their other work.
| | 00:21 | For example, in this project identify
additional costs and hire contractors both
| | 00:28 | occur at the same time and they
both use the Project manager,
| | 00:33 | but hire contractors is really short.
| | 00:35 | So we can add a split and let the
Project manager jump off and finish that task
| | 00:40 | and then go back to identifying additional costs.
| | 00:43 | To do this we kind of want these task bars to be
a little bit longer so it's easier to add the split.
| | 00:50 | So the thing to do there is on
the View tab in the Zoom section.
| | 00:55 | Click the Timescale down arrow and
in this case choose Quarter Days.
| | 01:00 | You can see that the taskbars I actually
get quite long, but that's what we want.
| | 01:09 | So we'll scroll over to where these two tasks are.
| | 01:13 | Now to split the task go to the Task tab
and click the Split button.
| | 01:18 | It kind of looks like a taskbar
with some lines are coming off of it.
| | 01:22 | So click that button and you can see
the pointer changes with this arrow
| | 01:27 | pointing to the right to show you're going to add a split.
| | 01:30 | To add the split, point at the taskbar
for identify additional costs where you
| | 01:35 | want to split the start,
and then drag over to where you want it to end.
| | 01:40 | When you let go, now you can see there's this dotted line
and that indicates a split in the task.
| | 01:47 | So now the Project manager can work on
identifying additional costs,
| | 01:51 | then jump over here to hire contractors.
| | 01:54 | When that task is done go back to identifying costs.
| | 01:58 | Splitting a task is one solution where
you break a task into two or more pieces
| | 02:04 | so you can schedule other work in the middle.
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| Delaying a task or assignment| 00:00 | One way to resolve over-allocations is
by delaying tasks and assignments so the
| | 00:06 | assigned resources can work
on tasks one after the other.
| | 00:09 | In this example, the Finalize lease task
and the Identify additional cost task
| | 00:15 | both occur at the same time and
they both use the Project manager.
| | 00:20 | But in this example Finalize lease is on the critical path.
| | 00:24 | You can see its red taskbar.
| | 00:26 | Identify additional cost is not critical.
| | 00:29 | It has a blue taskbar.
| | 00:31 | So this solution is perfect for a delay.
| | 00:34 | We can delay the Identify additional cost task
and still not affect the Project finish date.
| | 00:40 | When you work with delays the
best view is the leveling Gantt.
| | 00:44 | So on the Task tab click the bottom
half of the Gantt Chart button, then go to
| | 00:50 | More Views, click Leveling Gantt, and click Apply.
| | 00:54 | You can see the Leveling Delay field.
| | 00:58 | That's how you add delays to tasks.
| | 01:00 | This is the same field that Project
uses in its Level Resources feature.
| | 01:05 | So it's a great way to say that a delay is in a task
specifically to eliminate a resource overallocation.
| | 01:12 | You can see these red people indicators show
that there is a resource overallocation.
| | 01:17 | I am going to click Scroll to Task on
a Task tab so we can see the taskbars.
| | 01:23 | Here you can see Finalize lease.
| | 01:27 | You can see the taskbar and the
resource and for identify additional costs
| | 01:32 | you can see the taskbar and you can also see
the slack coming off the end of that taskbar.
| | 01:37 | Well, one thing to keep in mind is that
leveling delay uses elapsed time.
| | 01:43 | If you think about it, elapsed time
means working and nonworking time.
| | 01:48 | That's important here, because
Finalize lease is five days long.
| | 01:52 | That's a full work week.
| | 01:55 | So if we want to delay identify additional costs,
we actually have to delay at seven elapsed days.
| | 02:03 | So I click the cell type 7ed for a
seven elapsed days and then press Enter.
| | 02:09 | Now you can see that there's this
little bar coming off the beginning of that
| | 02:14 | task and that's the leveling delay,
but you also see it solves the problem,
| | 02:19 | because the indicators of overallocations are gone.
| | 02:22 | If you decide later on to assign someone different,
you can always remove the delay
| | 02:27 | by setting the Leveling Delay field to 0 days.
| | 02:31 | Delaying a task is one way to
remove resource over allocations.
| | 02:35 | By using the Leveling Delay field you
make it clear that the delay is there
| | 02:39 | because of resource availability.
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| Adjusting a work contour| 00:00 | Project starts out assuming that
resources work the same level every day from
| | 00:05 | tasks start to finish, but workloads
can vary like tasks that starts slowly,
| | 00:11 | ramp up to a full load and
then taper off at the end.
| | 00:15 | In Project you can apply work contours
to resource assignments to reflect how
| | 00:20 | work really gets done.
| | 00:21 | Work contours applied to Auto Scheduled
tasks and the Flat Contour is the default.
| | 00:27 | The best place to work with work
contours is the Task Usage view.
| | 00:32 | So on the Task tab click the bottom half
of the Gantt Chart button and then
| | 00:37 | choose Task Usage; and you can
see tasks as well as assignments.
| | 00:41 | We're going to work with the Inventory
office task, so I select the task and up
| | 00:47 | on the Task tab on the right side I click
Scroll to Task and that way we can see
| | 00:52 | the work hours for each day.
| | 00:55 | You can see here that this task spans six days right now.
| | 00:59 | Well with work contours, they apply to
assignments, so actually what we want to
| | 01:04 | work with is the Office Manager assignment.
I select that cell and then
| | 01:09 | double-click and that brings up the
Assignment Information dialog box, and sure
| | 01:15 | enough the work contour is Flat.
| | 01:18 | To apply a different work contour click
the down arrow and you can choose from
| | 01:23 | one of these different contours.
| | 01:24 | In this case I'm going to choose Bell
and that's one of the ones where it
| | 01:29 | ramps up goes to a full load in the
middle and then tapers off, but you can also
| | 01:34 | choose things like Back Loaded, which
means it starts slow and then just goes to
| | 01:38 | a peak at the end and stops, so I
click Bell and then click Apply and you'll
| | 01:44 | notice a couple of things.
| | 01:46 | First of all the task takes longer,
now it's going over more than six days,
| | 01:51 | but it has to do that because the first day
only has a half an hour of work schedule.
| | 01:57 | You also notice there is an indicator in the Indicator
column that shows that a workload is applied.
| | 02:03 | The thing about a work contour is
you can actually get rid of overallocations
| | 02:07 | because you might have one task
overlap another task where when
| | 02:13 | the one is ramping down the other one
is ramping up and the resource can work
| | 02:17 | on both at the same time.
| | 02:19 | Now you can't create custom contours, but
you actually can edit the hours in this grid.
| | 02:26 | So for example, I could type in one hour
on the first day and two hours on the
| | 02:32 | second day, you can see that the
Indicator changes to add a pencil and that
| | 02:37 | shows that you've edited the hours in this grid.
| | 02:40 | Although work contours lengthen assignments,
you may be able to overlap tasks.
| | 02:45 | That way you can eliminate resource
overallocations with only a small impact on
| | 02:50 | the Project finished date.
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| Leveling resources| 00:00 | Project's Level Resources feature delays
and splits resource assignments to help
| | 00:05 | you get rid of overallocations.
| | 00:07 | You can level the entire project or just
the portions that are giving you trouble.
| | 00:12 | If you're going to work on resource overallocations,
the best view is the Leveling Gantt.
| | 00:18 | So on the Task tab click the bottom half of
Gantt Chart button and then choose Leveling Gantt.
| | 00:24 | If you don't see it on this dropdown
menu you can go down to More Views.
| | 00:28 | Then in the More Views dialog box
select Leveling Gantt and click Apply.
| | 00:35 | Now go to the Resource tab. Before you
actually level resources, you have to set
| | 00:41 | some options to tell Project how you want to level.
| | 00:43 | So to do that, in Level section click Leveling Options.
| | 00:48 | The first choice is Automatic or Manual.
| | 00:52 | It's set to Manual by default and that's really the best choice.
| | 00:56 | That means Project will only level when you tell it to.
| | 01:00 | If you select Automatic, Project re-levels
whenever you make a change to the
| | 01:05 | project and that slows everything down.
| | 01:07 | So keep it on Manual.
| | 01:09 | The next choice is the Timeframe that
we use. The best option is to use little
| | 01:14 | bit longer time frames, because overallocations
have a way of just working out over time.
| | 01:20 | So in this case you might
want to do you Week by Week.
| | 01:23 | If it's a really long project you
could even choose Month by Month.
| | 01:28 | The checkbox Clear leveling values
before leveling is turned on by default, and
| | 01:33 | that's a setting you want to keep.
| | 01:35 | That tells Project to get rid of all the
delays it added before and then start over.
| | 01:40 | It makes it a lot easier to see what you're doing.
| | 01:43 | You can also Level the entire Project or a Date Range.
| | 01:47 | When you first start you can Level the
entire project, then later on when you're
| | 01:52 | working on a smaller part of the project
you can always select the Level option,
| | 01:57 | and then choose a Date Range to
just level that part of the project.
| | 02:00 | The Leveling Order is set to Standard.
| | 02:04 | If you assign priorities to tasks,
choose Priority Standard, that way
| | 02:10 | higher priority tasks gets scheduled first,
and that way Project delays the lower priority tasks.
| | 02:18 | The checkbox Level only within available slack
is turned off and you want to keep it that way.
| | 02:25 | Available slack is really in short
supply in a project, so if you turn
| | 02:30 | this checkbox on usually resource leveling
isn't going to make a whole lot of difference.
| | 02:35 | The next checkbox Leveling can
adjust individual assignments on a task.
| | 02:40 | In a lot of cases it's one particular resource
that's over allocated.
| | 02:45 | So by turning this checkbox on the
way it is here, Project can readjust that
| | 02:51 | particular assignment and
leave the others the way they are.
| | 02:55 | The next checkbox Leveling can create
splits in remaining work is also turned on.
| | 03:00 | That's another one to keep the way it is.
| | 03:03 | That way Project can put splits and
tasks to get rid of overallocations.
| | 03:08 | If we use proposed resources turn on
the next checkbox, but in this project we
| | 03:14 | just have regular resources, they are all committed
to the project, so we'll leave it turned off.
| | 03:20 | The last checkbox Level manually
scheduled tasks, is also turned on by default
| | 03:25 | and you want to keep it that way.
| | 03:27 | Once all the options are set, just
click OK. Project will use those options
| | 03:32 | every time you level until you go back in and change them.
| | 03:36 | If you want to level the entire project
up in the Ribbon just click Level All,
| | 03:41 | but in this case I want to level one
resource, so I click Level Resource.
| | 03:46 | And actually if you have tasks selected
then the Level Selection button will
| | 03:51 | also be active and you can click
that one, but I'll click Level Resource.
| | 03:58 | Then scroll down, select the Office Manager,
and click Level Now.
| | 04:02 | In this case the tan bars are the original dates,
and the blue bars are the level dates.
| | 04:08 | Well this first task is the same, but the second task
you can see that there's been a delay added.
| | 04:16 | This leveling did work, because all
the red people indicators are gone from
| | 04:20 | the indicators column.
| | 04:21 | So the Office Manager is no longer overallocated.
| | 04:25 | If for some reason you don't like
the results of leveling, go up to the
| | 04:29 | Quick Access toolbar and click Undo, and that
gets rid of all the leveling that you just did.
| | 04:36 | You can also click Clear Leveling on the Ribbon.
| | 04:39 | You can make short work of leveling
resource workloads by setting Leveling Options,
| | 04:43 | and then telling project to Level All or part of your project.
| | 04:48 | If you don't like the results you can undo the leveling,
change the settings, and try again.
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| Inactivating a task| 00:01 | Inactivating tasks helps in several ways.
| | 00:03 | You can create tasks for alternative
approaches for the same work, or change
| | 00:08 | requests that haven't been approved,
and then make the tasks inactive.
| | 00:13 | That way you see them in your Project file,
but they don't affect your schedule,
| | 00:17 | cost, or resource workloads.
| | 00:20 | If you want any inactive tasks become part
of the schedule you simply reactivate them.
| | 00:25 | To see how inactive tasks work,
let's look at the overall project first.
| | 00:31 | So this project has a Duration of 171.5
days, it starts on June 3rd, finishes on
| | 00:38 | January 28th, has a cost of about $162,000
and Work hours of 2000 hours.
| | 00:46 | Let's say management knows where it wants to go,
so you don't have to choose a new location.
| | 00:51 | We'll select the Choose new location summary task,
and then on the Task tab, click Inactivate.
| | 00:58 | Well now that these tasks are Inactive
you can see a couple of things.
| | 01:03 | First of all, the text is kind of light gray
and it has strikethrough through it.
| | 01:08 | In addition in the Timescale, the Task
bars are white with a gray boundary, but
| | 01:13 | now take a look at the overall project again.
| | 01:16 | The Duration is gone down to 139 days,
the Finish Date is December 12, the Cost
| | 01:23 | is dropped to $123,920,
and the Work is down to 1560 hours.
| | 01:31 | What's interesting about Inactive task is even though
they are inactive, you can still edit them.
| | 01:37 | So for example, I can edit the Duration for the
Identify Potential Sites task, change it to 10 days.
| | 01:47 | You can see that Project still
recalculates things, so it shortens the duration
| | 01:51 | of the Choose new location summary task,
and it changes Work hours and so on.
| | 01:56 | Well now look what happens if I reactivate the task.
| | 01:59 | I select the Summary Task, and click Inactivate again.
| | 02:04 | So now the tasks comeback and they are active.
| | 02:08 | But if you look at the overall project,
the Duration it started out at
| | 02:13 | 171.5 days, but now it's 161.5, because I
shortened that identify potential sites duration.
| | 02:22 | In addition that shorter duration also reduces the cost
a little bit and themwork hours a little bit.
| | 02:28 | Inactive tasks are perfect for alternative
options or tasks you don't have approval for.
| | 02:34 | If you decide to add the task to the project,
you simply reactivate them and you're ready to go.
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|
|
9. Tracking and Managing a ProjectUnderstanding baseline, scheduled, and actual values| 00:00 | After your Project plan is approved
it's important to save target values like
| | 00:05 | dates, work hours and cost in a Baseline.
| | 00:09 | Project also keeps track of actual values you record,
and the current forecast of the schedule.
| | 00:15 | Before you evaluate performance in Project,
it's important to understand what
| | 00:19 | baseline, scheduled, and actual values represent.
| | 00:23 | Well the Gantt chart shown here doesn't show
the baseline, so let's go to the Tracking Gantt.
| | 00:29 | On the View tab, click the bottom half of the
Gantt Chart button and choose Tracking Gantt.
| | 00:35 | If you don't see it in this menu, you
can always choose More Views, scroll down
| | 00:41 | until you see the view, click it and then click Apply.
| | 00:45 | I am also going to apply the Baseline table,
so I'll click the Tables button,
| | 00:51 | choose More Tables then select Baseline, and click Apply.
| | 00:57 | Now in this view, you can see Baseline values
and you can also see gray task
| | 01:02 | bars for the baseline, the blue and red task bars
represent the current forecast for the schedule.
| | 01:09 | Another place to see all these values
is in the Task Details Form.
| | 01:13 | So turn on the Details checkbox, then
click the down arrow, if you see Task
| | 01:19 | Details Form in the menu click it,
otherwise choose More Views, click Task
| | 01:25 | Details Form and click Apply, and then
you'll notice there are three options
| | 01:30 | Current, Baseline, and Actual.
| | 01:32 | Well in this case Current is the same
as the Scheduled values.
| | 01:36 | I'm going to use Identify additional cost
to show the difference between these values.
| | 01:43 | I am also going to apply the Summary Table.
| | 01:47 | Now scheduled values when you first
start are the forecast for your project;
| | 01:54 | basically it's the plan that you're developing.
| | 01:57 | Then once the stakeholders approve your plan
you want to save those scheduled values to your baseline.
| | 02:04 | Basically you take a snapshot of your
forecast and turn it into your baseline.
| | 02:09 | That's the target you're going to
aim for, for the rest of the project.
| | 02:12 | When you save a Baseline, it saves Start
and Finish Dates, Duration, Work and Cost.
| | 02:18 | Then you start recording actual values
once the project gets underway.
| | 02:23 | So to see those, click the Tables button
and choose Tracking, and now you can
| | 02:30 | see some of the actual values for these tasks.
| | 02:33 | Down in the Task Details Form, you can
see them by selecting the Actual option.
| | 02:38 | Once your project is underway, the scheduled
values start to update based on the
| | 02:43 | actual values you enter,
and your forecast for what remains.
| | 02:49 | So for example, this task has an actual
start date and you can see that when
| | 02:55 | I select the current option, the Start Date is the same.
| | 02:59 | So once you put in an actual Start Date,
the scheduled start date equals that.
| | 03:04 | Once the task is complete like the
Estimate costs for tenants, you can see that
| | 03:10 | the scheduled values are the same as the actual values.
| | 03:14 | So in this case the scheduled values
start date is August 18 and that matches
| | 03:21 | the actual start date, and the scheduled finish date
of August 22nd matches the actual finish date.
| | 03:29 | Because Project keeps track of your Baseline,
Actual and Current forecasts, it
| | 03:34 | easy to keep an eye on whether tasks
are ahead of or behind schedule, and
| | 03:38 | whether costs are within or exceeding budget.
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| Saving and clearing a baseline| 00:00 | When the customer or stakeholders
approve your project plan, your next step is
| | 00:05 | to save the Baseline in Project.
| | 00:07 | You can also save additional baselines
at later dates. For example, to record
| | 00:12 | significant changes to the plan or to
track trends and project performance.
| | 00:17 | If you don't need a Baseline anymore,
you can clear it to remove its values.
| | 00:21 | But before you save a baseline you want to
make sure that your schedule has everything in it.
| | 00:27 | Basically it needs to be what the
stakeholders approved, then to save the
| | 00:32 | baseline on the Project tab click Set Baseline,
and choose Set Baseline on the dropdown menu.
| | 00:39 | For the first baseline, the options
in the Set Baseline dialog box are what
| | 00:44 | you want, because you're saving the
initial baseline, it's called Baseline;
| | 00:49 | compared to the Baseline 1 through 10,
which are the other 10 that you can set.
| | 00:54 | The other option is For the Entire project.
| | 00:57 | It's the first baseline so you do want to do that,
save the entire project. So just click OK.
| | 01:04 | When you do that what happens is these
fields that you see here, the scheduled
| | 01:08 | values, Duration, Start, Finish, Cost
and Work all get saved to Baseline field.
| | 01:16 | To see that, I'll go to the View
tab, click the Tables down arrow, and
| | 01:23 | choose Variance, and here you can see
the scheduled start dates, so it starts
| | 01:28 | June 2 and it's the same as the Baseline Start Date.
| | 01:32 | Now I'm going to go back to the Project tab,
choose Set Baseline and Set Baseline again.
| | 01:38 | This time around you see that there is a
date saved after the baseline name, and
| | 01:43 | that's how you know that the baseline has been saved.
| | 01:45 | Well let's say your project has gone
through some big changes. For example, it
| | 01:50 | gets put on hold while another project
gets all the attention for a few months.
| | 01:54 | Well three months later you come back
and resume work, all those dates in your
| | 01:59 | baseline are no longer valid.
You can save another baseline.
| | 02:04 | In this case click the Baseline down arrow,
and choose the Baseline you want to save,
| | 02:08 | let's say Baseline 1.
| | 02:11 | If you want you can save the Entire project again
and click OK, and now you have another baseline.
| | 02:18 | You can use this new baseline to
track performance going forward.
| | 02:22 | You can tell Project which baseline
you want to look at in your views.
| | 02:25 | So to see that, I am going to go to the
View tab, click the bottom half of the
| | 02:31 | Gantt Chart button and choose Tracking Gantt.
| | 02:34 | Now the Tracking Gantt shows
Baseline Task bars in the Timescale.
| | 02:38 | So you can see the gray task bars here.
| | 02:40 | Initially project uses the baseline,
the one just called Baseline.
| | 02:45 | But if I want to look at a different baseline,
go to the Format tab, click the
| | 02:50 | Baseline down arrow, and then
choose the Baseline you want.
| | 02:54 | In this case, Baseline 1, and now
those task bars show Baseline 1.
| | 02:58 | On the other hand, suppose a baseline is no
longer relevant, maybe a project has a new direction.
| | 03:04 | Well you can clear a baseline.
| | 03:07 | Go to the Project tab, click Set Baseline,
and choose Clear Baseline.
| | 03:14 | Then in the dropdown list, choose the
Baseline you want to clear.
| | 03:18 | In this case I'll choose Baseline 1, click OK,
and you can see the Baseline 1
| | 03:24 | task bars went away, because that's
the one that's shown in this view.
| | 03:27 | Saving a baseline is easy, so you can quickly record
your original plan or major revisions to the plan.
| | 03:34 | It's just as easy to choose the baseline
you want to look at in Project and use
| | 03:38 | it to evaluate performance.
| | 03:39 | If you do need to clear a baseline,
it only takes a few clicks.
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| Adding tasks to a baseline| 00:00 | Every so often you need to edit a
baseline after you save it, for example the
| | 00:05 | stakeholders might approve some
additional scope and you need to add that to the
| | 00:09 | baseline, or you might need to change
baseline values that weren't correct.
| | 00:14 | You can resave parts of the baseline
to see the new target values while still
| | 00:19 | keeping track of any existing variants from the plan.
| | 00:22 | Before you have actual values
you can just overwrite the baseline.
| | 00:27 | On a Project tab, click Set Baseline,
choose Set Baseline, then in the
| | 00:33 | Baseline box, choose the Baseline
that you want to reset, in this case,
| | 00:37 | I'll just reset this original baseline,
then click OK. Because the Baselines
| | 00:43 | already been saved you get a warning
message, and it asks if you're really
| | 00:47 | sure you want to overwrite the data.
| | 00:49 | If there are any actual values that's what's
you want do, so just click Yes.
| | 00:54 | And now the new baseline saved.
| | 00:55 | But if you have actual values, let's
say you add tasks, or update a few revise
| | 01:01 | tasks you want to keep the variances
between the baseline and the actual values.
| | 01:06 | So in that case you're going
to update part of the baseline.
| | 01:09 | We have a few options for how you
update the baseline in this situation.
| | 01:14 | On the Project tab, click Set Baseline,
and choose Set Baseline again, this
| | 01:20 | time we use the a Selected Tasks option,
because you have Tasks selected and
| | 01:25 | there are two checkboxes you can choose from.
| | 01:28 | Initially they're turned off and that
says that these new values don't rollup to
| | 01:33 | any Summary Tasks, the added tasks, or
edits in this case will show up in all
| | 01:38 | the variances in the Summary Tasks.
| | 01:41 | But let's say you have approved work or
changes that you want to be part of the
| | 01:44 | plan, well in that case you turn on to
All Summary Task, because you want those
| | 01:51 | revisions to the Baseline to roll up to
all the summary tasks, that way you won't
| | 01:56 | see them as variances.
| | 01:58 | On the other hand if you have changes,
or added work that you want to track as
| | 02:02 | additions instead of the To all summary
tasks, turn on the other checkbox, From
| | 02:07 | subtasks into selected summary tasks.
| | 02:11 | What this does is it will actually
change the baseline values for the
| | 02:15 | selected Summary Tasks, but it leaves
the original baseline values for all
| | 02:20 | the other Summary Tasks.
| | 02:22 | That way the changes and revisions will show
up as variances at the top level of the project.
| | 02:27 | Let's take a look at how this works.
| | 02:29 | So I am going to cancel the dialog box
and actually show you this.
| | 02:34 | The first thing I am going to do is
I am going to add a task into this Evaluate
| | 02:39 | lease sites Summary Task.
| | 02:41 | So I click a row, go to the TASK tab and insert a task,
in this case, I'll call it the Eval lease terms.
| | 02:50 | I am going to set it to a 7 days duration,
I am going to assign the Office Manager.
| | 02:59 | I also want to link it to a couple of tasks.
| | 03:02 | So in this case, I am going to link it
to you Identify potential sites, so I
| | 03:07 | select that and then put the new tasks ID
over in the Successor table, and click OK.
| | 03:14 | I got that link in place and then I choose
the New Task and I put the ID for
| | 03:21 | select site in the Successor table and click OK.
| | 03:25 | So now I've got a couple links in place.
| | 03:27 | I want to apply the Summary table
to the Gantt chart view.
| | 03:30 | So I am going to click up in that view,
then go the View tab, click the Tables button,
| | 03:35 | and choose Summary.
| | 03:37 | Now you can see here that the work
for this Choose New Location is forecast
| | 03:44 | to be 408 hours, and the work for the
total project is forecast at 1985 hours.
| | 03:51 | But let's go back to the Baseline table,
so I'll click the Tables button, choose
| | 03:57 | More Tables, and apply Baseline.
| | 04:02 | You can see in this case, that Choose
New Location has a baseline work hours of
| | 04:08 | 352 hours, and the entire project is
1929 hours. That's the baseline, but now
| | 04:16 | we're going to edit the Baseline.
| | 04:17 | So in this case I am going to select the
Summary Tasks that include the
| | 04:22 | new task that I added.
| | 04:24 | So I select from choose New Location
down to Finalize lease; those are the
| | 04:29 | selected tasks, that I am
going to update the Baseline for.
| | 04:33 | So now I go to Project tab, click Set
Baseline and choose Set Baseline again.
| | 04:38 | I am going to Saved the Baseline,
choose the Selected Tasks option, in this case,
| | 04:44 | I want to roll up just to these two
selected Summary Tasks, not the entire project.
| | 04:51 | So I turn on a checkbox for from Sub Tasks
into Selected Summary Tasks, and then click OK.
| | 04:58 | Now Baseline has already been used, so
I get the warning about overwriting the data,
| | 05:03 | and I do want to do that so I click Yes.
| | 05:07 | And now you can see a couple of things.
| | 05:09 | Well, first of all the Change Highlighting
shows you which fields have changed.
| | 05:13 | So you can see that the work for this new
task is now part of the baseline, so that's a change.
| | 05:20 | And you can also see that the work for
these two summary tasks is changed from
| | 05:24 | 352 hours up to 408 hours for the new task.
| | 05:30 | But you can see that the work for the
entire project hasn't changed; it's still
| | 05:35 | the Baseline of 1929 and you don't see
any change highlighting on that value.
| | 05:40 | You can tell Project how to roll up new
or revised values into your Baseline so
| | 05:46 | you can have changes become part of
the baseline or show up these variances.
| | 05:49 | It all depends on what the stakeholders want to see.
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| Updating the schedule| 00:00 | Updating your project's schedule is crucial,
but you have to be smart about
| | 00:05 | collecting data and updating your project's status.
That way, team members aren't
| | 00:10 | overburdened with status reporting and you can
update your schedule without spending too much time.
| | 00:16 | The first thing to think about is what information
you're going to use to update your project.
| | 00:22 | If you're manually updating your
project file you really want to update
| | 00:25 | tasks not assignments, that way
you have fewer things to update.
| | 00:29 | It also helps to have a table set up
with all the fields that you update.
| | 00:34 | So I'm going to apply a table that
I created specifically for updating.
| | 00:39 | On the VIEW tab click Tables and you
can see under the Custom Heading, there's
| | 00:44 | an Updates table, so I am going to apply that.
| | 00:47 | The first column after the Task
Name is Actual Start, and that makes sense
| | 00:53 | because when you start to update tasks
the very first thing you're going to put
| | 00:56 | in is the Actual Start date.
| | 00:59 | But then after that the next two fields
are Actual Duration and Remaining Duration.
| | 01:04 | That's an easy way to update tasks,
basically you say how much duration has
| | 01:09 | been done and how much is left to do.
| | 01:13 | You can also use % Complete and Remaining
Duration because it calculates the same things.
| | 01:19 | One thing about using Duration is
it really is tracking work days.
| | 01:24 | So if you want a little bit finer resolution,
you can also use Actual Work and
| | 01:29 | Remaining Work; and that way
you track down to the hour.
| | 01:32 | There are also a few options that you
want to set in project before you update.
| | 01:37 | So to do that go to the FILE tab and
click Options. The first setting is in the
| | 01:43 | Schedule category, scroll down to the
Scheduling Options for this project's
| | 01:49 | section, and take a look at Split in
progress tasks, it's turned on by default
| | 01:55 | and you want to keep it that way.
| | 01:57 | That means if there are gaps in
when the work gets done you'll see that
| | 02:01 | reflected in your project file. Then scroll
down to Calculation options for this project.
| | 02:07 | The first setting is Updating tasks
status updates resource status.
| | 02:12 | If you are updating tasks and not assignments,
you want this checkbox turned on.
| | 02:18 | That tells project to take the values
you enter for the task and roll them down
| | 02:23 | to the individual resource assignments.
| | 02:25 | On the other hand if you're going to update
resource assignments you want to turn this checkbox off.
| | 02:32 | The rest of the options are in the advanced category,
so click Advanced and then scroll down to the bottom.
| | 02:39 | It's the Calculation Options for this project section.
| | 02:41 | Now these checkboxes have really long labels,
so they might look a little intimidating,
| | 02:46 | but they're actually pretty easy to understand.
| | 02:50 | The first one you want to turn on
that's Move end of completed parts after
| | 02:55 | status date back to the status date.
What that's really saying is if work is
| | 03:00 | completed and it's after the status date
that's saying that the work was done in
| | 03:05 | the future, which you know can't happen.
| | 03:08 | So by turning on this checkbox project will
move all the completed work to occur in the past.
| | 03:14 | The next checkbox, and moves start of
remaining parts back to status date; what
| | 03:19 | that's really doing, if you turn that
on is it takes anything that's incomplete
| | 03:24 | and moves it so it starts at the status date.
| | 03:27 | So in effect what you're going to see
is a task that starts and without a gap
| | 03:32 | goes to its finish, so you can turn on.
| | 03:36 | The next setting, Moves start of remaining
parts before the status date forward
| | 03:41 | to status date; you want that turned on.
Because what that's doing is it saying that,
| | 03:46 | work that's incomplete that's
scheduled before the status date that is in
| | 03:52 | the past, well it's not going to get
done in the past anymore, so you want to
| | 03:57 | move it forward to the status date so
it's scheduled to occur in the future.
| | 04:01 | And then the last checkbox, and move
end of completed parts forward to status date,
| | 04:06 | you can turn that on or leave it off;
it's really up to you.
| | 04:11 | If you turn it on, it'll show
the Taskbar without any gaps.
| | 04:14 | Well once the options are all set click OK.
| | 04:18 | Now before you start updating, you
have to give a status date, so go to
| | 04:23 | the PROJECT tab click the button for
Status Date and choose the status date you want.
| | 04:31 | In this case, I'll use Friday, September 26th.
| | 04:33 | Now you make updating a lot easier by
looking at just the tasks that you want to update.
| | 04:40 | So the first thing you might want to do
is turn off the Summary Tasks because
| | 04:44 | you don't update those you're
just going to update Work Tasks.
| | 04:47 | So go to the FORMAT tab and turn
off the Summary Tasks checkbox.
| | 04:53 | You also don't need to update Completed Tasks,
so you can apply a Filter to just show Incomplete Tasks.
| | 05:00 | Go to the VIEW tab, click the Filter
down arrow, and then choose Incomplete
| | 05:05 | Tasks on the menu; and now you can see
all the Work Tasks in the project that
| | 05:11 | aren't complete and you might update them.
| | 05:13 | There are several different situations
when it comes to updates. The first one
| | 05:18 | is the easiest one and that's a
task that's completely on track.
| | 05:22 | It occurred just as you planned.
| | 05:24 | So we'll use Hire contractors, to show this one.
| | 05:28 | You select the task, go the TASK tab, then in the
Schedule Section simply click Mark on Track.
| | 05:37 | And now you can see the % Complete is a 100%,
the Taskbar is sitting right where
| | 05:43 | it was scheduled, but it's showing as complete.
| | 05:45 | Another situation is a task that's complete
but didn't occur according to schedule.
| | 05:51 | So to see this one I'll chooses Finalize lease.
In this case go to mark on track
| | 05:58 | but click the down arrow and choose Update Tasks.
| | 06:03 | Now you can see the Update Tasks dialog box
and it has a variety of fields that
| | 06:08 | you couldn't fill in to specify the status on that task.
| | 06:11 | In this case, we will put in 12 days
for Actual Duration and the task is
| | 06:17 | complete so the Remaining Duration and 0 days.
| | 06:20 | The Original Duration was 10 days,
so this one is running a little bit
| | 06:24 | longer than scheduled, but it is complete.
| | 06:27 | When I click OK, you can see over in
the timescale that the dark blue Progress
| | 06:33 | bars show that it's complete, but it does
push it out because it did take extra time.
| | 06:39 | Now another situation is a task that's
not complete and it's not going according
| | 06:44 | to plan; that could be ahead of or behind schedule.
| | 06:48 | We'll use Inventory Office for
this example. So I select the task,
| | 06:52 | go up to Mark on Track click the down
arrow and choose Update Tasks again.
| | 06:58 | In this case the Scheduled Duration is 25 days
and in this case the Actual Duration
| | 07:03 | is 10 days and the Remaining Duration is 8 days.
| | 07:09 | So it's going to take a shorter duration than planned.
| | 07:12 | Now when I click OK, over in the timescale,
you can see that the Progress bar
| | 07:18 | goes to the Status Date and the incomplete work
is scheduled to start right after the status date.
| | 07:24 | I'm going to use the Identify additional
cost task to show one other update.
| | 07:29 | I'll go to Mark on Track and open the
Update Tasks dialog box one more time.
| | 07:36 | Right now % Complete is set at 65%,
but when I change the Actual Duration to 20 days
| | 07:45 | and the remaining duration to 5 days,
well 20 days out of 25 days are done.
| | 07:52 | So that's 80% percent so look what happens when
I click OK; Project recalculates the % Complete to 80%.
| | 08:01 | Now there's one last way to do an update
and that's for really quick and dirty updates.
| | 08:06 | It's not very accurate but it is fast,
so it's an option if you want to use it.
| | 08:11 | I'll select Inventory Office again and
to show how this works what you do is you
| | 08:16 | right-click the Taskbar in the timescale,
and then you see this shortcut menu
| | 08:21 | that has buttons for different levels
of % Complete. I can just click a button
| | 08:26 | and It'll change it to 75% Complete.
| | 08:30 | After you decide what status info you
need to track you can make updating your
| | 08:35 | schedule easier with some simple setup
steps in Project. Then you can update
| | 08:40 | tasks in Project using the update method you prefer.
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| Assigning overtime| 00:00 | One thing you don't want to do is assign
overtime as part of your original project plan.
| | 00:06 | If you count on long work days from
the beginning, you won't have any options left
| | 00:10 | if the schedule goes awry later,
but once the project is underway you have
| | 00:15 | a couple of ways to work with Overtime.
| | 00:17 | If your team members are salaried,
or get paid the same amount for every hour
| | 00:21 | they work, you can assign someone to work longer
hours by bumping up their units for an assignment.
| | 00:27 | This task usage view is already setup
to show the fields that you need to do this.
| | 00:32 | It's already filtered for incomplete tasks.
| | 00:36 | So we can see the tasks that haven't been done yet
and we could apply overtime to.
| | 00:41 | This table already has assignment units,
and peak in place, so you can just
| | 00:46 | change the assignment units that are set for a resource.
| | 00:50 | In addition over in the grid, you can see
the work, and the actual work that's been done.
| | 00:56 | To see how to assign longer hours, we're
going to look at the Inventory Office Task.
| | 01:01 | The Office Manager is assigned at 50% well
let's say the Inventory needs to get done sooner.
| | 01:08 | So you ask the Office Manager to work
longer hours, and you want to increase
| | 01:12 | the units to 75%; just click the
Assignment Units Cell, type in 75%, and you can
| | 01:21 | see the task actually finishes a week earlier.
| | 01:25 | Instead of the week of October 5 now
it finishes the week of September 28.
| | 01:30 | One thing you don't want to do, when
you increase Units, is to change the
| | 01:34 | maximum units in the Resource Sheet.
| | 01:36 | I'm going to go to the View tab, and
choose Resource Sheet, this Maximum unit
| | 01:42 | column is the maximum availability
of a resource for the entire project.
| | 01:47 | If I went in and set the Office Manager
to 125% that would be for the entire project,
| | 01:55 | and she probably wouldn't like that very much.
| | 01:58 | Now if resources are paid more for
overtime hours, you have to assign specific
| | 02:04 | overtime hours in project, to get the right labor costs.
| | 02:08 | Project multiplies the overtime rate
by the overtime hours you assign.
| | 02:13 | In the Resource Sheet you can see that
the movers are paid extra for Overtime;
| | 02:19 | regular hours or $50 an hour,
but overtime is $75 an hour.
| | 02:23 | Let's go back to the Task Usage View.
I am going to scroll down to the
| | 02:29 | bottom of the project, and we're going
to look for the Task pack and move that
| | 02:34 | has the movers assigned.
| | 02:35 | In this case we have to add specific
overtime hours, so we have to insert the
| | 02:42 | Overtime work field into the table.
| | 02:44 | So I right-click the heading, choose Insert Column,
and Insert Overtime.
| | 02:51 | I am also going to scroll so that
we can see these tasks in the grid.
| | 02:57 | I am also going to go the View tab
and change this to show Days, so we can
| | 03:03 | actually see the individual days for this assignment.
| | 03:06 | Now in this case, let's say we want
the Pack and move task to finish in the
| | 03:12 | previous week; its got 8 hours
of work on the following Monday.
| | 03:17 | So that's the time that we want to
move into overtime in the previous week,
| | 03:21 | well you can't edit overtime in the grid,
so you actually have to do it in the Table.
| | 03:27 | And in this case you just click the
Overtime work cell for the movers, and you
| | 03:32 | say I want 8 hours of Overtime for this task.
| | 03:35 | Now you can see the 8 hours on the
Monday have disappeared, and instead the
| | 03:41 | work scheduled for each day has gone up.
| | 03:45 | In addition let's look at the Task form.
I'll turn on the Details checkbox, and
| | 03:50 | the Task form appears in the bottom half of the window.
| | 03:52 | I want to look at Cost. When I select
the Movers assignment you can see that the
| | 04:01 | cost is $1800. There is 24 hours
of regular work a $50 an hour so that's
| | 04:07 | $1200, and there's 8 hours of Overtime
work at $75 an hour, that's $600.
| | 04:14 | So the total cost is $1800 as you would expect.
| | 04:19 | If Resources earn the same amount per hour,
you can assign longer hours, simply
| | 04:24 | by increasing units for an assignment.
| | 04:27 | If you do need to use Project's Overtime feature,
a little setup makes it easy to
| | 04:32 | designate overtime hours.
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| Updating costs| 00:00 | When you enter actual values in Project
the program takes care of calculating
| | 00:04 | actual costs for work and material resources.
| | 00:08 | However, if you use cost resources
you have to enter actual cost for them.
| | 00:13 | To see how Project handles labor and
material costs, you have this view that has
| | 00:18 | the tracking table applied and the task
form in place. That way we can see the
| | 00:23 | details about the tasks we select.
| | 00:26 | So for example, I'm going to select
the Prepare management presentation task.
| | 00:31 | Now you can see that the Project manager
is assigned to six hours and if there
| | 00:35 | are 12 packets assigned and that's a material resource.
| | 00:39 | But now I want to see cost.
| | 00:42 | So I right-click the task form and choose Cost
and now I can see the cost table.
| | 00:47 | In this case, the scheduled cost
is $540 for the Project manager, that's
| | 00:52 | six hours at $90 an hour and the 12 packets
cost a dollar 20 each, so the cost is $14.40.
| | 00:59 | Now if I change the % Complete to a 100%,
you can see the Project moves to
| | 01:06 | scheduled cost into the actual cost fields and I'm done.
| | 01:11 | But let's look at a task that has cost resource assigned,
in this case, identify potential sites.
| | 01:17 | It has the Project manager and the assistant assigned,
but it also has lodging, which is the cost resource.
| | 01:23 | If I change % Complete on this task to
a 100% and click OK, you'll notice that
| | 01:31 | the scheduled cost for the work resources
copies over into the actual cost cells,
| | 01:35 | but the actual cost cell for lodging is not changed,
so you actually have to fill that one in.
| | 01:43 | So let's say the actually cost was $1200,
so you type that in the actual cost cell.
| | 01:49 | And then in remaining cost, type 0,
because it's done and then click OK.
| | 01:55 | Now you have actual cost for all three assigned resources.
| | 01:59 | Project calculates actual cost for work
and material resources, based on the
| | 02:04 | actual work or actual duration you record.
| | 02:08 | To complete cost updates all you need to do
is enter actual costs for any cost resources you use.
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| Rescheduling unfinished work| 00:00 | Every so often you need a way to quickly record
project progress and reschedule incomplete work.
| | 00:06 | Suppose your project was put on hold for
a few months and you want to reschedule
| | 00:10 | the unfinished work now that the project has resumed.
| | 00:13 | Another alternative is to tell Project
to record progress as if everything
| | 00:17 | happen just the way you planned.
| | 00:20 | To reschedule work go to the
Project tab and then click Update Project.
| | 00:26 | Then in the Update Project dialog box
select the option for Reschedule
| | 00:31 | uncompleted work to start after, then
you enter the date that you want to resume.
| | 00:37 | So in this case let's say its December 1, 2014.
I'm going to reschedule the
| | 00:42 | entire Project, so that means anything
that's incomplete will get rescheduled.
| | 00:47 | When I click OK you can see that there
are gaps, and if I scroll over when we get
| | 00:54 | December 1st you can see the taskbar
start to reappear; so everything is
| | 00:59 | rescheduled to start at December 1.
| | 01:02 | When you use this approach you need
to check your schedule specifically for
| | 01:06 | manually scheduled tasks, because you'll
have to move those, you might also want
| | 01:10 | to save a new baseline to reflect the new dates.
| | 01:14 | We covered saving a baseline when
we talked about saving baselines.
| | 01:18 | Now there's another way to update a Project,
it's kind of the big hammer
| | 01:22 | approach to bringing a Project up-to-date,
it really only works if your Project
| | 01:26 | is mostly on track, because it says
everything happen the way you planned it.
| | 01:31 | I want to use a different Project for this one.
| | 01:34 | So on the View tab I'll go select that
Project then the next thing you do is you
| | 01:40 | select the tasks that you want to update.
| | 01:43 | So in this case, I'm going to select from
task ID 11 down to the milestone for Phone lines ordered.
| | 01:50 | One thing to notice is that that last milestone,
Phone lines ordered, is set to happen on September 30th.
| | 01:57 | Well now I go to the Project tab and I need to set the
Status Date, so I'm going to choose September 26th.
| | 02:05 | What I'm going to do here is update
the Project through September 26th as
| | 02:12 | if everything happened the way it was
scheduled. So in this case, I click Update Project,
| | 02:17 | and you can see that the option Update
Work is complete through a selected and
| | 02:22 | that's what you want and the
status date is already in place.
| | 02:26 | Now what happens is Project updates the
tasks that are scheduled to start before
| | 02:30 | the status date, but you can see that
there are two options, the first one set
| | 02:36 | 0% to 100% complete, means it'll update
every task whether it's unstarted or its
| | 02:43 | complete or it's somewhere in between.
But the other option Set 0% or 100%
| | 02:50 | complete only, means it will handle
unstarted tasks and complete tasks, but it
| | 02:56 | leaves anything that's in progress alone.
| | 02:59 | So we'll select that one and then click OK.
| | 03:02 | Now one thing you can notice here is
that inventory office was in progress,
| | 03:09 | it had 30% complete and you can see from the
change highlighting that it wasn't changed.
| | 03:15 | On the other hand review phone system
requirements is complete because it was
| | 03:20 | supposed to complete before the status date
and it changed to a 100%, order new
| | 03:26 | phone numbers is scheduled after
the status date, so it's still 0%.
| | 03:32 | If you don't need accurate values for
billing customers or paying contractors,
| | 03:36 | you can update your Project in a
hurry with a few handy shortcuts.
| | 03:40 | Once you're caught up you can go
back to recording progress as usual.
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|
|
10. Viewing and Reporting Project InformationViewing project schedule status| 00:00 | Reviewing Project status on a regular
schedule is the best way to get an early
| | 00:05 | warning of problems that are brewing.
| | 00:07 | There are several ways to view your Project status.
| | 00:10 | A high-level view is a good place to start.
| | 00:13 | One way to get a high-level view
of your Project is with the Project
| | 00:17 | summary task. To see it, go to the Format tab
and turn on the Project Summary Task checkbox.
| | 00:24 | Now you see over in the table
there's a new row at the top of the table.
| | 00:29 | It has a special task ID of 0 and
that represents the Project summary task.
| | 00:34 | You can see here it has project-wide values for the project.
| | 00:39 | The complete duration, the project
start and finish date, the overall percent
| | 00:45 | complete for the entire project, its cost and work.
| | 00:49 | You can apply different tables to
see other fields about the project.
| | 00:53 | For example, I go to the View tab,
click the Tables button, and choose Cost and
| | 01:00 | now I can see the current total
scheduled cost for the project,
| | 01:04 | the baseline cost and the cost variance.
| | 01:08 | In this case the cost variance is negative
and you can see that the scheduled
| | 01:13 | cost is less than the baseline.
| | 01:15 | So right now, this project is
scheduled to come in under budget.
| | 01:19 | I click the Tables button and choose
the Variance table and now I can see the
| | 01:24 | scheduled start and finish date as well as
the baseline start and finish and
| | 01:29 | the schedule variance.
| | 01:30 | So in this case the scheduled start date is June 2 of 2014.
| | 01:36 | The scheduled finish in September 7 of 2015,
but the baseline finish is August 20.
| | 01:43 | So there's a finish variation of positive 12 days.
| | 01:47 | That actually represents 12 days late.
| | 01:50 | There's another way to get a quick view of Project statistics.
| | 01:54 | Go to the Project tab, click Project Information,
and then in the Project
| | 01:59 | Information dialog box go to the bottom
and click Statistics. You get
| | 02:04 | this compact little dialog box with all
kinds of information about your entire Project.
| | 02:09 | For example, you can see the scheduled baseline
and actual start and finish dates
| | 02:14 | and here you can see those start variants is 0 days.
| | 02:18 | So it started when it was supposed to.
| | 02:21 | But the scheduled finish variance is 12 days.
| | 02:24 | So it's right now scheduled to come in 12 days late.
| | 02:27 | You can also see a scheduled baseline and
actual values for duration, work, and cost.
| | 02:34 | Project also has some reports that are
great for overviews of your entire Project.
| | 02:39 | So go to the Report tab, click Dashboards,
and then choose Project Overview.
| | 02:45 | On the left you can see the start and finish date
for the Project as well as the % Complete.
| | 02:51 | Over on the right there is a chart
of % Complete and you can see that the
| | 02:56 | planning 75% done, but nothing else has started yet.
| | 03:01 | In addition, you see a list of milestones
that are due as well as the tasks that are late.
| | 03:06 | Another good overview is the burn down report.
| | 03:10 | Go to the Report tab, click Dashboards,
and then choose Burndown.
| | 03:14 | The chart on the left shows the burndown of work.
| | 03:18 | So it shows basically how much you've burned
of the Project by the work that you've completed.
| | 03:23 | The chart on the right is a burndown of tasks.
| | 03:26 | So it shows how many tasks you have, how many
you have completed, and how many are still to remain.
| | 03:32 | Project has several features to help
you evaluate how your Project is doing.
| | 03:37 | Give them all a try and then use
the ones you find most helpful.
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| Looking for schedule progress problems| 00:00 | Once a project is underway, you need to watch
the schedule to see if it's progressing according to plan.
| | 00:06 | Project offers several tools that help you spot schedule
problems and correct them before they get out of hand.
| | 00:12 | The Tracking Gantt is a really good view to start with,
because it shows the baseline.
| | 00:17 | So on the Task tab click the bottom half
of the Gantt chart button and then choose Tracking Gantt.
| | 00:23 | Here you can see the gray taskbar is in the timescale,
show the baseline start, and finish dates.
| | 00:30 | The blue and red task bars show the scheduled
start and finish dates for the same tasks.
| | 00:36 | Now one of the places you can look
for problems is tasks that start late.
| | 00:41 | You can use the Should Start By filter to look at these tasks.
| | 00:44 | So on the View tab click the down arrow in
the filter box, then choose More Filters.
| | 00:55 | Click Should Start By and then click Apply.
| | 00:58 | You have to give it a start by date.
| | 01:01 | So in this case I'll choose October 12
and now you can see the list of tasks
| | 01:08 | that should have started by October 12, but haven't.
| | 01:12 | At this point you can check with the assigned
resources to find out what the status is.
| | 01:17 | You might have forgotten to include updates
in your project or you can ask the
| | 01:22 | resources why these tasks are starting late.
| | 01:25 | The next place to look is for tasks that are falling behind.
| | 01:29 | So in the Filter dropdown list choose More Filters.
| | 01:35 | In this case, click Slipping Tasks and click Apply.
What this shows our tasks that
| | 01:41 | are slipping beyond their baseline dates
and you can see the gray taskbars are
| | 01:45 | to the left and all of these other
blue taskbars are to the right.
| | 01:50 | So they're scheduled to be later than the baseline.
| | 01:52 | In this case, this project had been delayed early on.
| | 01:56 | So most of the tasks are slipping.
You can also see the slippage with these
| | 02:01 | narrow black bars that come off of the baseline.
| | 02:04 | The slipping tasks filter actually looks for
tasks that have actually started late;
| | 02:10 | they're scheduled to start late,
or they're taking longer than they should.
| | 02:14 | Another place a scheduled can get into trouble
is if there is more work than was originally planned.
| | 02:20 | To see that, in the Filter dropdown list choose
More Filters and then apply the Work Overbudget filter.
| | 02:29 | To see how this works click the
Tables button and apply the Work table.
| | 02:35 | Here you can see that the scheduled work hours
for these tasks are higher than the baseline.
| | 02:40 | So there is a positive variance and that means
that these tasks have more work than you planned.
| | 02:47 | The problem with having more work than you planned
is that work takes some time to do.
| | 02:52 | So that can increase the duration of the task
and it can also result eventually in a late finish date.
| | 02:59 | The Slipped/Late Progress filter combines
slipping tasks with more work than planned.
| | 03:05 | So in the Filter dropdown list choose More Filters,
find Slipped/Late Progress, and then click Apply.
| | 03:15 | If you want to get graphical indicator of status
you can insert the statusindicator field in the table.
| | 03:21 | So I right-click the Task Name
header and then choose Insert Column.
| | 03:28 | I add the Status Indicator field.
| | 03:30 | A check mark in this field shows that the task is complete.
| | 03:35 | If you see a clock with a check mark it's on time.
| | 03:39 | In this task the clock has an exclamation mark (!)
| | 03:42 | in the middle of a red diamond and that's
an indication of the task is behind schedule.
| | 03:47 | Project also has a few reports
that can show you schedule problems.
| | 03:51 | So go to the Report tab, click In Progress,
and choose Slipping Tasks.
| | 03:59 | Here you see a table with all the tasks
that are slipping, or you can go to In Progress
| | 04:04 | and choose Late Tasks and here's a task
that's late compared to the status date.
| | 04:11 | The Burndown report is another place
that you can look for schedule problems.
| | 04:16 | Go to the Report tab, click Dashboards,
and then choose Burndown.
| | 04:20 | I'm going to change the date range of
this chart on left so that we can see
| | 04:24 | these values a little bit more clearly.
| | 04:26 | I click the chart and over on the field
list pane on the right-click Edit and I
| | 04:34 | choose a different finish date for the date range.
| | 04:39 | Now the gray line shown here is the baseline
for the remaining cumulative work.
| | 04:45 | On the other hand, the blue line is the
scheduled remaining cumulative work, and
| | 04:51 | in this case the blue line is above the
gray line and that means that there is
| | 04:55 | more work left to do than you had planned.
| | 04:59 | That's why this project is little bit behind schedule.
| | 05:02 | By using your Project tools to check
for tasks that are straying from the baseline,
| | 05:06 | you can spot problems easily, and then figure out
what corrective action to take.
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| Looking for cost problems| 00:00 | While a project is underway
you need to keep an eye on Costs.
| | 00:04 | Project has Tables, Filters, and Reports
that help you look at Project Cost and
| | 00:09 | find Tasks or Resources that cost more than planned.
| | 00:13 | The first place to look is the Cost table,
because it shows cost variance.
| | 00:18 | So go to the View tab, click the
Tables button, and then choose Costs.
| | 00:23 | Here you can see total cost is the scheduled Costs for tasks.
| | 00:28 | Then there's the baseline and Cost Variance,
if it's negative it means that it's under budget.
| | 00:35 | You can see the total cost here is less than the Baseline.
| | 00:39 | You can look for Tasks that are
running over budget with a filter.
| | 00:43 | In the Filter dropdown list, choose More Filters,
then click Cost Overbudget, and click Apply.
| | 00:51 | Here you see the tasks that have a
higher scheduled cost than the baseline.
| | 00:57 | These are the ones with a positive cost variance.
| | 01:00 | Another place to look is Tasks
that have more work than planned.
| | 01:05 | To see those, click the down arrow in
the Filter box, choose More Filters, and
| | 01:10 | then apply the Work Overbudget filter.
| | 01:14 | In this case the same tasks appear and
that's because Work Overbudget means that
| | 01:19 | there is more work than you planned.
| | 01:21 | Those higher work hours also increase cost.
| | 01:25 | Then there are some reports you can use to look at cost.
| | 01:29 | Go to the Report tab, click Dashboards,
and then choose Cost Overview.
| | 01:35 | In addition to seeing the scheduled Cost
in the Remaining Cost, the Progress
| | 01:39 | versus Cost chart on the right is very helpful.
| | 01:43 | Here you can see that the blue line is
the Percent Complete, and the orange line
| | 01:48 | is the Cumulative Cost, because Percent
Complete is above Cumulative Cost, that
| | 01:54 | means that the Project is under budget.
| | 01:57 | You have gotten more complete than you've spent.
| | 02:00 | Another report is Cost Overruns.
| | 02:03 | Go to the Report tab, click Costs,
and then choose Cost Overruns.
| | 02:08 | On the left you can see the Task Cost Variance.
| | 02:12 | So the planning is under budget,
on the right you see the Resource Cost Variance
| | 02:17 | and you can see it's the Office Manager
who has the largest negative Cost Variance.
| | 02:24 | That means under budget.
| | 02:25 | Go to the Report tab, click Costs,
and now choose Earned Value Report.
| | 02:31 | In this chart the blue line is the actual cost
you incurred for the work that's performed.
| | 02:37 | The orange line is the budgeted cost
for the work performed.
| | 02:41 | That's the baseline cost for the work performed.
| | 02:44 | In this case the actual cost is less than the baseline.
| | 02:48 | So it's another way of seeing that this is under budget.
| | 02:52 | Check your project frequently for costs
that different from the baseline to see
| | 02:56 | whether tasks are over or under budget.
| | 02:58 | By finding cost problems early you can take action
to decrease cost for the rest of the project.
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| Working with graphical reports| 00:00 | Graphical Reports are new in Project 2013.
| | 00:04 | They show Project information in charts and tables.
| | 00:07 | They're easy to run and you can quickly
edit them to show the information you want.
| | 00:12 | Let's take a quick look at the types of reports you can run.
| | 00:16 | On the Report tab click Dashboards.
| | 00:19 | There is the Burndown report and that
shows the work that you've completed
| | 00:23 | compared to plan, as well as the number of tasks
you've completed compared to what you have to do.
| | 00:30 | Also in Dashboards you have different
overview reports like Cost, Project, and Work.
| | 00:38 | In the Resources category you can see overallocated
resources or you can get a Resource Overview.
| | 00:48 | The Resource Stats chart on the left here is really helpful.
| | 00:52 | The gray line shows the baseline of
the work assigned to different resources.
| | 00:58 | Then the blue bar is the actual work
and the orange bars the remaining work.
| | 01:03 | But here you can see that that stacked bar
shows that the work for the Project
| | 01:07 | Manager is higher than the baseline.
| | 01:10 | Go to the Report tab and click Costs to
see different types of cost reports,
| | 01:16 | like cash flow, cost overruns, and the earned value report.
| | 01:22 | In Progress has Reports that show
you the Critical Tasks in your project,
| | 01:26 | tasks that are running late compared to the
Status Date, Milestones, and Slipping Tasks.
| | 01:34 | Running a report couldn't be easier.
| | 01:36 | On the Report tab you click Category
in this case Costs and then choose the
| | 01:41 | report you want like Earned value report.
| | 01:47 | Or if you ran a report recently just
click Recent and then choose the Report.
| | 01:52 | After you run a report you can edit it.
| | 01:57 | So for example, to edit this chart
just click it and then you see this Field
| | 02:02 | List task pane appear on the right side of the window.
| | 02:05 | You'll also notice that there are
some extra tabs up on the ribbon.
| | 02:09 | These are the Chart tools tabs and
that's because you have a Chart selected.
| | 02:15 | The Design tab has things like the Chart Style,
Colors, or even adding an element to the chart.
| | 02:23 | You can also turn this Field List Task pane on and off
in the Show/Hide section by clicking Chart Data.
| | 02:31 | The Format tab has more formatting things.
| | 02:33 | So you can format the different parts of the chart.
| | 02:37 | You can change the Colors and Shapes and Text.
| | 02:42 | In the Field List Task pane for Existing Chart
you'll see Tasks and Resources
| | 02:48 | and one of them will be highlighted.
| | 02:50 | The Earned Value Chart is a task oriented chart
that's why tasks is green and bold.
| | 02:55 | The next thing is the Category and it
sets to Time here and that's because the
| | 03:00 | chart has time along the X axis.
You can edit that.
| | 03:04 | Just click the Edit button and
you can change the Date Format.
| | 03:08 | So let's say I want this to be a little bit smaller.
I don't want the Month spelled out.
| | 03:13 | I am going to change the Finish Date range for this.
I'll make it the end of October.
| | 03:18 | Now you can see the Date Range has changed
and the Date Format is little bit easier to read.
| | 03:25 | On the other hand, if I go to the Resources
and choose Resource Overview, this
| | 03:32 | Resource Stats Chart, you can see the categories name.
| | 03:36 | That's because resource names appear along the X axis.
| | 03:40 | This chart has three fields shown; Actual
Work, Remaining Work, and Baseline Work.
| | 03:47 | If you look in the Select Fields list, you can see that
Baseline Work is turned on, the check mark is there.
| | 03:55 | If I scroll down you can see the Actual Work
and Remaining Work are both checked.
| | 04:01 | So if you want to add a remove field from a chart,
you just turn on a checkbox or turn it off.
| | 04:07 | For example, let's say I want to add Work Variance.
| | 04:10 | So I just turn on the Checkmark and sure
enough now there is another line for Work Variance.
| | 04:15 | One thing you'll notice is that the fields
are grouped by data type.
| | 04:20 | So for example, if you want to see the
Cost Fields just click this triangle and
| | 04:24 | it expands and you can see all the cost fields.
To hide them just click it and it collapses.
| | 04:30 | You can also filter what you see.
| | 04:32 | So let's go to the Slipping Tasks Report.
| | 04:35 | That's in the In Progress section.
| | 04:39 | Now when I click this Table these are
the slipping tasks and you can see at the
| | 04:44 | Filter down here is slipping tasks.
| | 04:46 | So you can choose the filter that you want.
| | 04:50 | You can also group just like you can in View.
| | 04:53 | Just click the down arrow and choose the
Group you want, for example, by Resource.
| | 04:57 | Now when you run a Task Oriented Report,
you can also choose the Outline Level.
| | 05:04 | Let's go over to the Dashboard and choose
Project Overview. Here you can see
| | 05:09 | that this chart, the Outline Level is level 1.
So all you see are the top-level tasks.
| | 05:15 | On the other hand, if I click this table
for the late tasks, you can see the
| | 05:20 | outline level is set to All Subtasks.
| | 05:22 | So to choose a Level, click the down
arrow and choose the level you want.
| | 05:28 | Finally, you can also Sort a report.
L et's look at Cost Overruns.
| | 05:33 | I'm going to select this table and you
can see that it's sorted by Cost Variance.
| | 05:44 | So it shows the highest variance at the top
and then it goes down from there.
| | 05:49 | Graphical Reports make it easy
to look at your project from different perspectives.
| | 05:53 | If a built-in report doesn't show what
you want, you can select a chart or table
| | 05:58 | and customize it to display the
information you're looking for.
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| Using earned value| 00:00 | Earned Value Analysis measures performance
based on how much of the project cost
| | 00:05 | you've earned by completing work.
| | 00:07 | Earned Value converts costs and work
progress into dollars, so you can see cost
| | 00:12 | and scheduled performance side-by-side, but you
need a couple of things to do Earned Value Analysis.
| | 00:18 | The first thing you need is a baseline,
because you're comparing performance to
| | 00:23 | the plan. We go to the Project tab,
click Set Baseline and Choose Set Baseline
| | 00:30 | and here you can see that there is a
baseline saved, because you can see the
| | 00:33 | date it was saved on. So we've got
the first part. I'll click Cancel here.
| | 00:38 | The second thing you need is a status
date, because earned value looks at work
| | 00:43 | completed through the status date.
| | 00:44 | Here on the Project tab you can
also see that there is a status date,
| | 00:49 | so basically we're all set to do Earned Value Analysis.
| | 00:52 | To look at Earned Value go to the Report tab,
click Costs and then choose Earned Value Report.
| | 01:03 | In this chart planned value is called BCWS
and that stands for the Budgeted Cost
| | 01:10 | of the Work Schedule; it's the gray
line in the chart and it represents the
| | 01:16 | baseline for the work that's scheduled for the project.
| | 01:19 | In other words it's how much you plan to spend
on work originally scheduled through the status date.
| | 01:26 | The next measure is Earned Value
that's shown here in orange and it's called BCWP
| | 01:31 | for Budgeted Cost of Work Performed,
well that's the baseline cost that
| | 01:37 | you've earned for the work that's
completed through the status date.
| | 01:41 | You can see schedule status by comparing
the Earned Value to the Planned Value.
| | 01:46 | If the Earned Value is higher than the
Planned Value then you've completed more
| | 01:51 | work than you planned and you're ahead of schedule.
| | 01:54 | Here the Earned Value, the orange line,
is below the Planned Value, so that shows
| | 02:01 | that this project is behind schedule.
| | 02:03 | To look at cost status, you look
at the actual cost of work performed.
| | 02:09 | That's easy, it's how much you
actually spend through the status date.
| | 02:13 | To see the cost status you compare
the Actual Cost to the Earned Value.
| | 02:18 | If the actual cost for the work performed,
the blue line here, is less than the
| | 02:24 | planned cost for the work performed, the
orange line, then your project is under budget.
| | 02:29 | Now another way to look at Earned Value in
more detail is with the Earned Value Table.
| | 02:36 | So let's go to the Gantt Chart, and then
on the View tab click Tables, choose More
| | 02:43 | Tables, and Apply Earned Value, and now
you can see the Planned Value, Earned
| | 02:50 | Value, actual cost and a few other
things for every task in your project.
| | 02:56 | For example, SV is Schedule Variance.
| | 03:01 | That's the variance between the earned
value and the planned value and in this
| | 03:05 | case, positive means it's ahead of schedule.
| | 03:08 | You can see here that most of the values
are negative and this project is behind schedule.
| | 03:14 | However, CV is Cost Variance.
| | 03:17 | That's the variance between
Earned Value and Actual Cost.
| | 03:21 | Positive means it under budget,
so this task is under budget.
| | 03:26 | There are couple of options to tell Project
how you want to calculate earned value.
| | 03:32 | So to set those, go to the File tab
and choose Options, then go to the
| | 03:39 | Advanced Category and scroll to the bottom and
you'll see a section Earned Value options for this project.
| | 03:46 | Well one thing you can do is you can choose the Baseline.
| | 03:50 | In this case, we just have the one,
so that's the one we have selected.
| | 03:54 | The other option is what you want
to use to calculate earned value.
| | 03:59 | It's set to % Complete and that's the
percent of the duration that's complete,
| | 04:04 | which is probably not what you want.
| | 04:07 | The other option is the Physical % Complete.
| | 04:10 | What this lets you do is you can actually
specify the values for your tasks and
| | 04:15 | that let's you have some more
control over what values are valid.
| | 04:20 | Some people actually go with just 0% or 100%,
so a task is incomplete until it's
| | 04:27 | completely done or you can limit it to
a small set of values like 0, 50 and a 100.
| | 04:32 | In that case, a task that unstarted as 0%,
if it's in progress it's 50% and if it's complete, it's 100%.
| | 04:41 | I'm going to apply the Tracking Table
and you can see the Tracking Table has a
| | 04:49 | column for Physical % Complete,
so you can just fill in those values.
| | 04:54 | Earned Value Analysis helps you see schedule
and cost performance at a glance.
| | 04:59 | You can generate project's Earned Value
Report with a couple of clicks; you can
| | 05:03 | look at Earned Value by task to see
where the problems are and decide what to do
| | 05:09 | to bring your project back on track.
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| Printing views and reports| 00:01 | Communication is a big part of project management.
| | 00:03 | In Project, you can print user reports
to distribute to stakeholders, management
| | 00:09 | and team members. You can also copy the
contents of project views and reports to
| | 00:13 | paste into another program.
| | 00:15 | So if you want to print a view, first
select it, go to the View tab, click the
| | 00:21 | bottom half of the Gantt Chart button
and choose Tracking Gantt.
| | 00:26 | In this case, I have the Summary Table
Applied which is the one that I want to see.
| | 00:30 | The first thing you need to do is
drag the divider, so you can see all the
| | 00:35 | columns that you want in the table.
| | 00:37 | The other thing is to adjust the Timescale
to show the date range you want.
| | 00:43 | In this case, I'm going to go to the
Timescale dropdown list and choose Months
| | 00:48 | and that compresses the schedule.
| | 00:49 | Well now, go to the File tab and click Print.
You can see a Preview of the view
| | 00:56 | on the right side of the screen.
| | 00:58 | On the left side you have all the
usual Settings for printing, so you can
| | 01:02 | choose the Printer, you can choose
Landscape or Portrait Orientation, you can
| | 01:07 | choose the Size of the paper and up
at the top you can choose the Number of
| | 01:11 | copies you want to print.
| | 01:12 | There are few other settings.
| | 01:15 | So for example, if you click this down
arrow, you can print the entire project
| | 01:20 | from start to finish or it you can
Print Specific Dates or Specific Pages.
| | 01:25 | We can see here you can also set the dates
in the From and To boxes or the Pages.
| | 01:32 | You can also setup the Printed View
by clicking Page Setup at the bottom.
| | 01:38 | So for example, I'm going to click the
Legend tab. You see in the preview
| | 01:43 | that this legend takes up quite a bit
of space, and initially it set to print
| | 01:48 | on every single page, so it's usually a
better choice, is to select Legend page.
| | 01:54 | That way you have one page with the
Legend and the rest of the pages are
| | 01:59 | devoted to your project.
| | 02:00 | The View tab also has a couple of
interesting settings. If you turn on the
| | 02:05 | checkbox for Print all sheet columns
then every column in the table will print
| | 02:10 | in the view or if you choose the next
one, Print first 3 columns on all pages,
| | 02:17 | in this case, the ID, Task Name and
Duration would all print on every single page.
| | 02:23 | For this particular report you might
want to do the first two columns, so
| | 02:26 | that you can see the ID and task name for all the
values and things you see on the other pages.
| | 02:31 | Once you have all the settings the
way you want, just click the Print button.
| | 02:37 | If you want to put a picture of a view
in another program, there's a really easy
| | 02:41 | way to do that. Let's go back to the
ribbon, click the Task tab, then click the
| | 02:47 | down arrow next to Copy and choose Copy Picture.
| | 02:51 | That way you can choose what you're
going to copy it to, you can specify what
| | 02:55 | you want to see, and you
can even choose the Timescale.
| | 02:58 | When you click OK, it goes to
the clipboard and then you can paste it
| | 03:02 | into something else, like a slide in PowerPoint.
You can also print graphical reports.
| | 03:09 | To do that go to the Report tab and run
the report you want. For example, I'll
| | 03:13 | go to the Dashboards and choose Cost Overview.
| | 03:16 | To print this, just go to the File tab and click Print.
| | 03:22 | The right side shows the preview, so if
it looks like what you want, you've got
| | 03:27 | all the usual settings on the left, and
if you've got the right printer and the
| | 03:31 | right paper size, just click Print.
| | 03:34 | Just like views, you can also copy
graphical reports to another program.
| | 03:39 | We'll go back to the ribbon, and you can
see that we've got our graphical report here.
| | 03:44 | In this case, I want to take these two
charts on the right-hand side and I'm
| | 03:48 | going to put them in a Word document.
| | 03:50 | To do that, I just drag over the
elements that I want to copy, and now you
| | 03:56 | can see that they're selected.
| | 03:57 | I'll go back to the Task tab and click Copy,
and now those elements are on
| | 04:03 | the clipboard, so at this point I can just switch over
to Word use Paste and there in that file.
| | 04:10 | A few clicks is all it takes to print a view or report.
| | 04:14 | If you want to include parts of a view
or report in another file, like a status
| | 04:19 | report, you can do that, too.
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11. Sharing ProjectsSaving to other formats| 00:00 | Most of the time you save a project
file with a quick file save command or
| | 00:05 | simple Ctrl+S; but you can save
project files to other formats, such as in
| | 00:10 | earlier project version, a template,
an Excel file or comma-delimited file.
| | 00:16 | You can also save with safety-oriented options,
like creating a backup copy or adding a password.
| | 00:22 | To save to other format, go to
the File tab and then choose Save As,
| | 00:29 | select the location where you want to save
the file and the Save As dialog box opens.
| | 00:34 | In the Save As type dropdown list
you can choose from several different
| | 00:39 | options, like older versions,
Excel workbooks and other formats.
| | 00:44 | To start, let's choose Microsoft Project 2000-2003.
I'm going to change the
| | 00:53 | file name and add 2003, so I know
what format it is, and then I click Save.
| | 00:59 | You can see this dialog box opens
and it's a bit of a warning about the
| | 01:04 | unsupported features that are in
this file that wouldn't be in the older
| | 01:08 | version. Here you can see manually
scheduled tasks and certain project
| | 01:13 | reports, and it tells you what it
will do with those and if that's what you
| | 01:18 | want, click Continue.
| | 01:19 | Here's a second little reminder to
make sure that you really, really want to
| | 01:23 | save in the older format, and if
that's what you want just click OK.
| | 01:28 | Now you can see I have this new file, because
the file name is up at the top of the window.
| | 01:33 | Let's say you want to save this file as a template.
| | 01:36 | The first thing you do is you set the option
where you want to save templates.
| | 01:40 | Go to the File tab and choose Options, then go to Save.
| | 01:46 | Well in the Save template section,
there's a box for Default personal templates
| | 01:52 | location, so click Browse.
| | 01:58 | Then you select where you want to save those files.
| | 02:04 | In this case I have a Templates folder
that I want to save the templates to.
| | 02:08 | So I select that and click OK.
| | 02:12 | Now I'm ready to save this file as a template,
so go back to the File tab and
| | 02:17 | choose Save As, and in this case, I'm
going to select that same templates file.
| | 02:27 | I also want to change the File name,
give myself a hint that it's a template
| | 02:33 | and in the Save As type dropdown list, I'm
going to choose Project Template then I click Save.
| | 02:42 | This Save As Template dialog box
opens and it's asking about the type of
| | 02:48 | data that you want to remove from the template.
| | 02:50 | For example, you probably want to
remove the values of all Baselines, because
| | 02:55 | think about it, if you have Baselines
start and finish dates, the next time you
| | 02:59 | use the template, those dates won't
be valid, so we turn that checkbox on.
| | 03:04 | You save a template to use for a future projects,
so you really don't want actual values.
| | 03:11 | You might want to keep the Resource Rates,
but if you use a template far
| | 03:15 | enough in the future, those rates
may change, so turn that one on or off
| | 03:20 | depending on what make sense.
| | 03:22 | Then when you're done, click Save
and now we have a save template file.
| | 03:27 | Creating a file from a template is covered
when we talk about how to use templates.
| | 03:32 | Let's look at some of the other formats.
| | 03:35 | Go back to the File tab, choose Save As,
and then select the folder that you want.
| | 03:42 | In the Save As type dropdown list, you
can see, you can save as an Excel workbook.
| | 03:47 | In this case, Excel workbook is the
current Excel format and if you choose that,
| | 03:53 | when you save the file, the Export
Wizard launches, which is covered when we
| | 03:57 | talked about importing and exporting.
| | 03:59 | You can also save as Tab-delimited or Comma-delimited.
| | 04:03 | When you do that, Project saves the
active table and opens the Export Wizard.
| | 04:08 | If you want to publish to the web,
you can choose XML format or if you want
| | 04:13 | electronic copies of the file,
you can choose PDF files or XPS files.
| | 04:19 | XPS stands for XML Paper Specification,
which is a Microsoft approach to Adobe PDF files.
| | 04:25 | You can also save files with special save options.
| | 04:31 | In the Save As dialog box choose the down arrow
next to tools, and then choose General Options.
| | 04:37 | If you turn on the Always create backup
checkbox then what Project does it save
| | 04:42 | the regular project file, but it saves a
second copy with the BAK file extension,
| | 04:47 | so that way you always have a backup copy.
| | 04:51 | Fill in a protection password if you
want to enter a password in order to just
| | 04:55 | open the file. The right reservation
password is the password you would enter
| | 05:00 | to edit the file and then the Read-only
recommended checkbox, if you turn that on,
| | 05:05 | every time you open the file,
Project will ask if you want to open it as
| | 05:09 | read-only or so you can edit it. Then when
you're done with Save Options just click OK.
| | 05:16 | Saving to other formats is as easy as using
File>Save As and choosing the format you want.
| | 05:22 | You can also protect your Project
files with several special save options.
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| Working with the Global Template| 00:00 | Project's built-in elements like views,
tables, filters, settings, and so on
| | 00:07 | are stored in a file called the Global Template.
| | 00:10 | You can also modify those elements or create
your own as you see throughout this course.
| | 00:16 | To make sure the elements you want
are available when you want them,
| | 00:20 | it's important to understand where
Project stores elements, and how to use the
| | 00:24 | Organizer feature to manage them.
| | 00:26 | The Organizer is a feature for managing the elements
in your Project files, and the Global Template.
| | 00:32 | To get to it, go to the FILE tab, and then click Organizer.
| | 00:36 | We can see the Organizer has tabs for
all the different kinds of elements that
| | 00:42 | are stored in the Global Template and your Project files.
| | 00:46 | The Global Template is listed on the left
and your open projects are listed on the right.
| | 00:52 | If you only have one project open,
you'll just see that in the box.
| | 00:56 | But if you have more than one open,
you can click the down arrow and then
| | 01:00 | choose the project that you want.
| | 01:01 | In this case, I'll stick with OneProject.
| | 01:04 | Now for example, if you click a tab,
you'll see what's stored in the Global
| | 01:08 | Template on the left and what's
in the project file on the right.
| | 01:12 | So for example, let me choose the Tables Tab.
| | 01:16 | So on the left, you have all the tables
that are in the Global Template, and on
| | 01:20 | the right, the ones in the OneProject file.
| | 01:23 | One thing you might notice is
that there is a Delay table on both sides.
| | 01:29 | If you make modifications to a
built-in element like the Delay table, then
| | 01:34 | Project stores a copy of that table in your active file.
| | 01:39 | That way, whenever you show that table,
you're going to see the one that you modified.
| | 01:44 | On the other hand, the Delay table
that's in the Global Template is going to
| | 01:49 | show up for any project that
doesn't have its own modified version.
| | 01:53 | And it will also be available to
any new projects that you create.
| | 01:57 | Let's close the Organizer for now,
and go back to the Ribbon.
| | 02:00 | Now what happens if you create a new element?
| | 02:04 | Let's say on the View Tab, I click
Other Views, and then choose Save View.
| | 02:10 | In this case, I'll call it BrandNewview, and click OK.
| | 02:17 | Now I have a new view called that name,
or I go to the Tables button, and
| | 02:24 | choose Save Fields as a New Table,
and I'll call this BrandNewtable.
| | 02:27 | So now I've got two new elements.
| | 02:36 | Let's see what happens to those with the Organizer.
| | 02:39 | I go to the FILE tab.
| | 02:41 | On the Info page, click Organizer.
| | 02:44 | On the Views Tab, you can see that BrandNewview
has made it into the Global Template.
| | 02:50 | If I click the Tables tab, BrandNewtable
is also in the Global Template.
| | 02:55 | Out of the box, Project has an
option set so that it copies any new
| | 03:01 | element you create into the Global Template.
| | 03:04 | That's usually what you want
because that way your new elements are
| | 03:08 | available to every new project that
you create as well as existing projects.
| | 03:13 | But let's say you work with other project managers,
and you don't want those going into the Global Template.
| | 03:19 | You can change a setting in Project for that behavior.
| | 03:22 | I'm going to close the Organizer dialog box,
and now choose Options.
| | 03:27 | Go to the Advanced category,
and then scroll down to the Display section.
| | 03:34 | You can see this checkbox 'Automatically add new
views, tables, filters, and groups to the global'.
| | 03:41 | That's what's making the automatic copy happen.
| | 03:45 | So if you don't want to do that, just
turn off the checkbox and then click OK.
| | 03:51 | You can also use the Organizer
to manage elements and files.
| | 03:54 | So go back to the FILE Tab, and click Organizer.
| | 03:58 | So let's say I want to copy a table.
| | 04:02 | So I go to the Tables tab.
| | 04:03 | And here in my Project, I have the Updates table.
| | 04:07 | It's not in the Global Template,
and let's say now, I want this table in there.
| | 04:14 | So I just select it in the Active file, and then click Copy,
and now it's in the Global Template.
| | 04:21 | Similarly, if you want to delete
an element, you can do that too.
| | 04:25 | Here I have a BrandNewview Table 1,
and I really don't want that one.
| | 04:30 | So I select it, and click Delete.
| | 04:32 | It asks me to confirm, so I click Yes.
| | 04:35 | And now that table is gone.
| | 04:37 | Keep in mind you can't delete an item if it's in use.
| | 04:41 | So if you get a warning message about that,
just go out of the Organizer, go
| | 04:45 | back to your view, change it so that
for example, the View, or the Table is not selected,
| | 04:51 | and then you go back into the Organizer,
and you can delete it.
| | 04:57 | You can also use the Organizer to
copy between two regular Project files.
| | 05:01 | So for example, I have OneProject
sitting on the right side, and the Global
| | 05:06 | Template is on the left, but I can change that.
| | 05:09 | Click the down arrow, and choose AnotherProject.
| | 05:13 | Let's say I want to copy this UpdateStatus view
over to this other project.
| | 05:18 | I select it and click Copy, and now it's in that project.
| | 05:23 | Keeping your favorite elements in the Global Template
means they're available to every project you work on.
| | 05:29 | The Organizer feature helps you manage
built-in and customized elements so the
| | 05:34 | elements you want are available when you want them.
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| Importing and exporting| 00:00 | When you import or export data, you
can control the data you send between
| | 00:04 | programs, and where it goes in the destination file.
| | 00:08 | Project has wizards for importing and
exporting data, so you can follow the
| | 00:13 | wizard's lead to get data where you want it to go.
| | 00:16 | As far as importing from Excel,
you see that when we talk about creating a
| | 00:21 | project from an Excel workbook.
| | 00:23 | But importing from other formats is similar.
| | 00:26 | So for example, we can import from a comma delimited file.
| | 00:30 | Before we do that, we have to change
one setting in Project, so we can actually
| | 00:34 | open other formats of files.
| | 00:36 | To do that, go to the FILE Tab, and click Options.
| | 00:41 | Then choose Trust Center.
| | 00:43 | On the right-side, click Trust Center Settings.
| | 00:47 | Click the Legacy Formats category.
| | 00:49 | You can see that the option is set
'Do not open/save files with legacy or
| | 00:55 | non-default file formats in Project'.
| | 00:57 | That means you just simply can't open them.
| | 01:00 | So instead, choose the second option,
| | 01:04 | 'Prompt when loading files with
legacy or non-default file formats'.
| | 01:09 | That way, Project will ask you if you want to open them.
| | 01:11 | Then click OK, and click OK again.
| | 01:15 | Now we can go an import a comma delimited file.
| | 01:19 | Go to the FILE tab, and click Open.
| | 01:25 | Choose the folder that has the file.
| | 01:27 | In the dropdown list, choose the Format.
| | 01:30 | In this case, it's comma delimited.
| | 01:33 | Then select the file name and click Open.
| | 01:37 | The Import Wizard starts.
| | 01:38 | This first page is just information, so click Next.
| | 01:42 | We're going to use a new map, so click Next again.
| | 01:47 | Now you have three options;
| | 01:49 | you can import to a brand-new project,
you can append the data to the active project,
| | 01:54 | or you can merge the data into the active project.
| | 01:57 | In this case, we want to create a brand-new project,
so leave this option selected and click Next.
| | 02:04 | You can also choose what types of data you import;
tasks, resources, or assignments.
| | 02:10 | In this case, we're importing tasks,
so leave that option, keep the checkbox
| | 02:15 | for 'Import includes headers', and in the
'Text delimiter:' box it's a comma delimited file.
| | 02:22 | So click comma, then click Next.
| | 02:25 | Now we really get down to business,
because we map what's in the comma
| | 02:30 | delimited file with Microsoft Project fields.
| | 02:33 | You can see that Project guesses
on a few of them and does pretty well.
| | 02:37 | But there are a couple that it can't map.
| | 02:39 | So in this case, Estimated_Work maps to the project
Work field, and Resources maps to Resource Names.
| | 02:48 | When everything looks the way you want, click Next.
| | 02:55 | If you want to save that map, click the Save Map button.
| | 02:58 | But right now we're just going to import the data.
So click Finish.
| | 03:02 | You see this message about trying to
open a file saved in an older file format.
| | 03:08 | We'll just click Yes, and now you have
your new project based on the imported data.
| | 03:15 | Well now let's look at the other direction;
| | 03:18 | Exporting data from Project.
| | 03:20 | So I'm going to close this Project file.
| | 03:24 | Now, I have this other project
with data that I want to export.
| | 03:28 | The first thing that you want to do is choose the View,
and the Table that you want to export.
| | 03:33 | In this case, on the TASK tab, click the bottom-half
of the Gantt Chart button and choose Gantt Chart.
| | 03:39 | Then on the View Tab, click Tables, and choose Cost.
| | 03:43 | Now this is the table that I want to export,
and I want the entire table.
| | 03:49 | So click the cell at the top of the Task ID column.
| | 03:53 | It's called the Select All Cells because it selects
every cell in the table, and now we're ready to export.
| | 03:59 | So go to the FILE tab and choose Save As.
| | 04:04 | Select the Location where you want to
save it, and the Save As dialog box opens.
| | 04:08 | In this case, click the down arrow
for 'Save as type:' and choose Excel Workbook.
| | 04:16 | I'm also going to change the name,
so I know what the file is, and then click Save.
| | 04:25 | The Export wizard starts.
| | 04:26 | And it's a lot like the Import wizard.
| | 04:29 | The first page is information, so click Next.
| | 04:31 | We selected data, so this is the right option,
leave Selected Data, and click Next.
| | 04:39 | In this case, we're going to use an existing map.
| | 04:42 | So select that option, and click Next again.
| | 04:46 | And the map we want is Cost data by task.
| | 04:49 | So select it and click Next.
| | 04:52 | Now with Excel, you can actually create
multiple worksheets, so if you wanted to,
| | 04:56 | you could export Tasks, Resources, and Assignments.
| | 05:01 | In this case, we're just exporting task information.
| | 05:04 | So leave that checkbox turned on, and
leave the checkbox for Export includes
| | 05:10 | headers turned on, and click Next again.
| | 05:12 | In this case, Project has everything
set up to export, so you can just click Finish.
| | 05:20 | Now Project doesn't automatically open Excel,
but the file is out there in Windows Explorer.
| | 05:26 | So if I minimize Project, now you can see
that the Excel file that I created is there.
| | 05:32 | Whether you want to import data into
Project, or export Project info to another
| | 05:37 | program, Project's Import and Export
wizards make it easy to exchange data with
| | 05:42 | other programs, and get the data
where you want it to go.
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| Sharing project information in other ways| 00:00 | You can choose from several methods for
sharing a Project file with others,
| | 00:04 | like the executive team or the
team members who perform work.
| | 00:08 | You can email a Project file as an
attachment or create a picture of your
| | 00:12 | project to include in presentations.
| | 00:14 | Project files can become linked or embedded
objects when you copy and paste from
| | 00:18 | Project to another program.
| | 00:21 | If your organization uses SharePoint, you can sync
Project tasks with the SharePoint tasks list.
| | 00:26 | If you want to email a file to others
who have Microsoft Project, go to the File tab
| | 00:31 | and click Share and click Email,
and click Send as Attachment.
| | 00:38 | When you do, that, Project goes to your
email program, it attaches your Project
| | 00:43 | file to the message and you can
send it as you would any other.
| | 00:47 | If you have SharePoint, click Sync with SharePoint.
| | 00:51 | That way, you can share tasks with
your team and get updates from them.
| | 00:56 | You can also copy a picture of your project,
you can use that to distribute
| | 01:01 | information or insert it in other files like PowerPoint.
| | 01:05 | To do that, go back to the Ribbon and
first make sure that the View is what you want.
| | 01:09 | For example we have the Gantt chart
view here, and that's fine, but you have to
| | 01:14 | make sure you can see all the columns
in the table that you want to see.
| | 01:18 | So drag the divider, if you have to.
| | 01:20 | Partial columns won't show up in the picture
and make sure the Timescale is what you want as well.
| | 01:26 | So for example we'll go to the View tab and choose
Weeks, then maybe scroll to show the taskbars.
| | 01:35 | Now go to the Task tab and click the
Copy down arrow, choose Copy Picture.
| | 01:42 | The first thing you can do in the Copy Picture dialog box
is select the destination for this image.
| | 01:47 | If it's going to go to the screen, leave
the For screen option selected.
| | 01:53 | If it's going to be printed, select the For printer option.
| | 01:56 | And if you want to create an image file,
select To GIF image file, then you can select the folder.
| | 02:03 | You can also choose how many Rows
appear in the image. For example, Rows on
| | 02:08 | screen will show just these rows, but
if you select Rows, before you copy the
| | 02:13 | picture you can choose the Selected rows option.
| | 02:17 | In this case, as shown on screen,
we'll show the timescale as it is on the screen,
| | 02:21 | but if you want to set the From and To dates,
you can do that.
| | 02:26 | When the picture is the way you want, click OK
and Project copies the picture to the clipboard.
| | 02:32 | Now you can just jump over to your other program
and paste where you want it.
| | 02:37 | Project offers several ways to share
your project information with others.
| | 02:41 | Explore the different methods that work
in your environment, before long you'll
| | 02:45 | know which way is best for sharing in any situation.
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ConclusionNext steps| 00:00 | Now I've covered the basics for
setting up a schedule in Project.
| | 00:04 | You've seen how to create projects and set
up basic Project information in calendars.
| | 00:09 | We've explored creating and linking
different types of tasks to build a schedule.
| | 00:14 | We've created work, material, and cost
resources, and assigned them to tasks.
| | 00:19 | You've also seen how to work with
Project's Views to fine-tune your schedule,
| | 00:24 | track progress, spot problems, and take corrective
action to bring a wayward Project back on course.
| | 00:30 | We've explored creating different types
of reports and walked through ways to
| | 00:35 | share Project information with others.
| | 00:37 | Now that you've seen how to use Microsoft Project,
you might want to broaden
| | 00:41 | your knowledge of managing projects.
| | 00:43 | Consider watching my courses, Project
Management Fundamentals, and Managing
| | 00:47 | Small Projects for more detail on these topics.
| | 00:50 | Good luck, and thank you for joining me
in Project 2013 Essential Training.
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