Hello and welcome to this brief overview of Project Server 2013.
I'm going to show you some of the new additions in Project Web App 2013 that greatly improve
the user experience.
As you can see, the PWA homepage already looks much different than it did in 2010.
The get started section is all new, with graphical tiles updated with the look and feel of Office
2013 and Windows 8.
It will give you shortcuts to some of the commonly used features of PWA, such as creating
projects, the reporting section, and many more.
Underneath the get started section, you will see the tiles in the track your work section.
These will replace the reminders for Project Web App 2010 and have made it much easier
to quickly see your approvals, tasks, time sheets, issues, risks, and any overdue status
reports that you might have out there.
On the left hand side, you will see the Quick Launch navigation links.
This menu has been slightly customized, but you will notice in 2013 that some of the links
have been reordered.
Let's dive in and take a look at the Project Center itself.
You reach that by clicking the Projects link in the Quick Launch navigation.
The first major change you will notice is the addition of the timeline view.
First introduced in the Project Professional 2010 New Client, the timeline has been integrated
in PWA 2013.
This shows your projects on the timeline at a project level, as opposed to the task level
view you would see in Project Professional.
You will also see that Microsoft has extended the look and feel of Project 2013 into Project
Server here on the Gant Chart styling.
The color scheme has been updated, as well as more stylized bars with rounded edges.
Now let's open a project and take a look.
I'll do that by highlighting the project that I want to open, then in the project ribbon,
I will click open.
I'll now select in browser for editing so that we can take a look at the project inside
of PWA 2013.
This wording has changed from 2010, where it said in project web app for editing.
This opens our project up to the project details page.
We've configured this page to capture information about the current project as a whole.
For this project, you can see that we have configured the project detail page to capture
the standard information like name, description, and start date, as well as custom fields for
project region, project risk.
You will also notice that these fields are mandatory so that we will be guaranteed to
capture this data at the time the project is created.
Underneath that, you will see that we are capturing estimated project cost for expense
and labor, as well as displaying a calculated field for the estimated total cost for the
project.
On the right hand side, you will see a web part that has been added with some brief instructions
on how to use this page.
This example is brief, but we do have the ability to put any information here that the
project managers might need when they are initiating new or updating existing projects
using Project Server 2013's web application.
From here, we can move onto the project schedule page by clicking on the project schedule link
in the Quick Launch navigation.
We have created this customized schedule project detail page.
For this particular project, in addition to the out of the box schedule page, we see some
important scheduling information relevant to the project, such as the start and finish
date of the project.
The start date has been captured by the project manager and the finish date is calculated
by the Microsoft Project Scheduling Engine.
Below that, we now have the project timeline.
A popular addition to the Project Professional 2010 Client, this is one of the great new
features in Project Server 2013.
It offers project managers the ability to display any key tasks and milestones for the
project that they select.
In the next section, you will see the familiar tasks and the Gant Chart.
This looks similar to what you may have been accustomed to in 2010, but now has been updated
with the new styling of 2013.
Another great new feature in Project Web App 2013 is the ability to easily switch between
the project detail pages and the project site.
Here in the Quick Launch navigation, you will see the link for the project site.
Clicking this will take you to the project site.
This allows you to switch between the project site and the project detail pages in a much
more fluid manner, compared to the PWA 2010.
On this project site, we've spent some time configuring the home page with some of the
new functionality provided to us in the Project Web App 2013.
This first web part is a new addition called the project summary.
It is a very cool feature that is new in PWA 2013.
On the left side, it shows us the days remaining until the project's due date.
Then to the right, we have a section that shows the timeline, as well as scrolling to
show us the project's late and upcoming tasks.
This will be very useful for users that want to be able to see what's going on with their
projects at a quick glance.
Underneath the project summary section, you'll see web parts that have been added for issues,
risks, and a section for all the project documents that are stored for this project.
Moving over to the Quick Launch navigation, we have another familiar area.
Most of the links, such as project issues, risks, and documents, go the same places they
did in Project Server 2010.
However, clicking on the project tasks will take us to a new project task view.
Viewing the project task page, we'll see the timeline that we've become familiar with,
but beneath there is a new dynamic task list that is updated directly from the project
schedule.
On the right, you will see a column showing the due dates, as well as highlighting any
overdue tasks in red.
You also see that any tasks that are complete will show a struck through, allowing a project
manager a better idea the state of the project.
That's all for the new lists in PWA 2013, but you will see the new link here for project
details that lets you jump directly back to the project details or schedule for editing.
Now we can close our project.
To do that, we will come up to the project ribbon and click Close.
This will give us the option to check the project in or keep it checked out.
I'm going to go ahead and check this one back in.