Hello, welcome to this video! Let's get a general and complete overview
on all the main features inside Microsoft Project Professional 2019, in
order to start using it straight forward!
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Microsoft Project is an advanced product used to ease the management of
task and people inside a business environment by specifying objectives,
organizing schedules and fixing deadlines, work time and holidays for each
resource inside the team in the most efficient way.
When opening Project, its start-up page shows up, with your most recent
Project documents on the left side and ready templates to use on the
right if you want to start from a new document. To see the basics of
Project, let's just start from a new Blank Project.
The main workspace is divided in several parts: on top you have the
Ribbon, collecting all the features and tools inside Project; at the
bottom you have the main project table where you edit and organize the
schedule, the assignments and the tasks; and above it you have the
Timeline, which focuses on selected chosen Tasks.
First thing to do is to define the complete list of task on the Task
Sheet on the left and then organize and check these through time on the
Gantt Chart on the right.
To create a new task, type the task name on a new row and define when it
should Start and Finish. At this point the task appears on the Gantt
Chart as a colored bar extended on the timeline as much as the task
duration is. You can also use the zoom bar in the bottom right corner to
zoom in and out on the Chart, showing weeks, days, hours or quarters.
You can also double-click on the task bar to change its appearance and
color. To adjust text style and general appearance on the whole Gantt
Chart use the Format tab instead.
You can also change the task Start, Finish dates and Duration directly
on its bar on the Chart. Click and drag the bar to move it in time and
drag from its right edge to change its duration.
The task Duration is measured in working days between the Start and
Finish date, from Mondays to Fridays. These are showed as white columns on
the Gantt Chart, whereas nonworking days such as Saturdays, Sundays and
holidays are represented as grey columns. In case any task goes across
these columns, this gets extended in time, but its duration in working
days remains the same.
To change the nonworking days and insert national holidays go to the
Project tab and then to Change Working Time. Below, under Exceptions, you
can add special working or nonworking days with any recurrence if you
need, for example to add holidays, special meetings or conferences.
Under Work Weeks, you can specify periods of time where the working days
and hours change or become nonworking days.
You can also go to Options... to change the ordinary working hours and
times.
Once you go to OK, the Gantt Chart updates with your changes, adding or
removing grey columns.
You can split a task by right-clicking on it and going to Split Task.
This splits the task in two independent parts, separated by a single day
and without changing the task duration. This is used to free some working
hours to dedicate to a more important task.
You can also add the percentage of completion by clicking and dragging
from the left edge of the task bar. This is represented as a thin line
progressing over the working days.
Whereas if you need to adjust all the details regarding any task just
double-click on its name and open the Task Information panel. Here you can
adjust percentage, priority, Duration and also Start and Finish dates.
Under Notes you can write additional comments and details; whereas, under
Advanced, you can fix a final deadline for the task to be respected. This
is indicated as a green down arrow on the Gantt Chart and in case the task
overcomes it, Project gives you a warning on the Task Sheet.
To remove any task, just right-click from the Task Sheet and go to Delete
Task.
By default all the new task created are Manual Scheduled task, with a
a pin symbol on the Task Sheet and with their Start, Finish and Duration
managed manually. From Task Mode you can turn these into Auto Scheduled
tasks which are moved and edited by Project in case these do not respect
the constraints you define, for example any deadline or limit.
From the Task Information panel you can go to the Advanced tab to add
any deadline and the constraints to be respected.
Indeed you can still move and edit Auto Scheduled task manually, with
the difference being that Project assist you with suggestions to make
your schedule effective while respecting deadlines and constraints.
To keep selected tasks under control you can use the independent Timeline
above. If you can't see it you can show it by going to the View tab and
then to Timeline.
To add task to the Timeline just right-click on these and go to Add to
Timeline. To remove these use Remove from Timeline instead.
You can add any dependence between two or more tasks by using the links.
If you click and drag from any task vertically, your cursor shows a chain
icon that you can move over another task to create a dependence between
two tasks. By default this creates a Finish-to-Start link, where the
second task can start just when the previous one (called Predecessor)
finishes. Each task can also admit multiple Predecessors.
All the Predecessors of any task are listed under the Predecessors column
with their row number.
To manage links between the task and its Predecessors you can open
the Task Information panel under the Predecessors tab. Each link is shown
with the Predecessor row number, its name and the kind of dependence.
Finish-to-Start is the default kind of link but you can also choose
Start-to-Start to start the current task when its Predecessor starts;
Start-to-Finish to begin the current task when its Predecessor ends; and
Finish-to-Finish to end the current task when the Predecessor finishes.
Pay attention when moving Manually Scheduled task that have links. In
case the new schedule does not respect the kind of link you will get
errors on the task, shown with dashed contours. You can use Respect Links
under the Task tab to correct the schedule of the current task.
In the case of Auto Scheduled task, these are solved automatically by
Project depending on your choice from the Planning Wizard.
To remove any link from the selected task, use Unlink Tasks. Whereas, if
you have any task in progress but you do not want it to interfere with
other tasks or links, select it and click on Inactivate.
Besides the task you also have the Summaries and the Milestones. You can
add these from the Insert section under the Task tab.
The Summaries are collections of tasks grouped together. When you create
one, this is added in bold inside the Task Sheet, including the first task
that was previously selected. Then you can rename, set it Manually or Auto
Scheduled and create other tasks within it or include others by clicking
and dragging these inside it.
On the Gantt Chart summaries are shown as thick containers extended in
time as much as their tasks inside are, but you can still adjust their
duration in case it is a Manually Scheduled summary.
Milestones are markers representing reached goals on the timeline. These
are shown on the Chart as single points complete with the goal date in
bold.
Summaries and Milestones properties can by adjusted by double-clicking
on these and using the Information panel. These objects can also include
links just like the standard tasks.
Microsoft Project also has great tools to manage all the people (or
Resources) inside a team, in order to assign and distribute properly the
work time in the most effective way. If you switch to the Team Planner
workspace you can add all your collaborators and then assign all the
tasks you have defined to these.
To add collaborators go to the Resource tab and then to Add Resource.
Then double-click on the new row to define name, email, group,
availability, specific working days, holidays and the resource cost.
Then you can assign any task by dragging and dropping these on the right
Resource row, respecting the timeline placement. Once assigned, these
tasks show the dedicated Resource names on the Gantt Chart.
In case you make bad assignments, for example when tasks meet holidays or
when overallocating Resources, red contours appear. The overallocation
can be resolved by using the Task Usage workspace.
This workspace is used to distribute the tasks between the Resources,
considering the limits defined for the weekly and the daily working hours.
In case any Resource does not respect the limits, these will be marked in
red as overallocated on the left side.
You can resolve this by either changing the task distribution in hours
on the right or using the Inspector panel to apply suggestions from
Project. This can also be used to apply automated corrections on other
workspaces just seen.
You can assign Resources to tasks also on the Task Usage workspace by
right-clicking on any task and then going to Assign Resources....
Inside Project you can extract complete reports to get a clear
representation on your project and your resources status and share them
easily outside.
To create a report, just go to New Report under the Report tab, choosing
whether to create tables, charts or use any ready template. All reports
are shown on the Report view and you can check any report by going to
Recent under the Report tab. You can also customize the report as you like
with all the tools inside the Design tab above.
To save your Project document, go to File and then to Save As, defining
destination and name. Project documents are saved as .mpp file formats.
In complex project managements you may need to include a project document
inside another document. You can do so by going to the Project tab and
then to Subproject, browsing for the interested file. This will be added
and treated just like an Auto-Scheduled Summary, directly linked and
updated to the latest version of the document.
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