- Microsoft® Office Project 2007 Inside Out
- SPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’Reilly
- A Note Regarding Supplemental Files
- Your All-in-One Resource
- Acknowledgments
- About the CD
- Conventions and Features Used in This Book
- I. Project Fundamentals
- 1. Introducing Microsoft Office Project 2007
- 2. Understanding Projects and Project Management
- II. Developing the Project Plan
- 3. Starting a New Project
- Focusing the Project Vision
- Creating a New Project Plan
- Entering Tasks
- Sequencing and Organizing Tasks
- Organizing Tasks into an Outline
- Setting Up Your Work Breakdown Structure
- Adding Supplementary Information to Tasks
- 4. Viewing Project Information
- 5. Scheduling Tasks
- 6. Setting Up Resources in the Project
- Understanding the Impact of Resources in the Project Plan
- Adding Resources to the Project
- Removing a Resource from the Project
- Identifying Tentative, Generic, or Budget Resources
- Setting When Resources Are Available for Work
- Adding Detailed Resource Information
- 7. Assigning Resources to Tasks
- 8. Planning Resource and Task Costs
- 9. Checking and Adjusting the Project Plan
- Working with the Critical Path and Critical Tasks
- Bringing in the Project Finish Date
- Reducing Project Costs
- Balancing Resource Workloads
- Changing Project Scope
- Reviewing the Impact of Changes
- Obtaining Buyoff on the Project Plan
- 3. Starting a New Project
- III. Tracking Progress
- 10. Setting a Baseline and Updating Progress
- 11. Responding to Changes in Your Project
- IV. Reporting and Analyzing Project Information
- 12. Reporting Project Information
- Establishing Your Communications Plan
- Using Views to Report Project Information
- Generating Text and Visual Reports
- Running Reports for Your Requirements
- Summarizing with Overview Reports
- Focusing on Tasks with Schedule Progress Reports
- Using the Unstarted Tasks Report
- Using the Tasks Starting Soon Report
- Using the Tasks In Progress Report
- Using the Completed Tasks Report
- Using the Should Have Started Tasks Report
- Using the Slipping Tasks Report
- Using the Baseline Report in Visio
- Using the Baseline Work Report in Excel
- Using the Task Status Report in Visio
- Using the Budget Work Report in Excel
- Analyzing Budget Status with Cost Reports
- Using the Cash Flow Report
- Using the Cash Flow Report in Excel
- Using the Cash Flow Report in Visio
- Using the Baseline Cost Report in Excel
- Using the Budget Report
- Using the Budget Cost Report in Excel
- Using the Resource Cost Summary Report in Excel
- Using the Overbudget Tasks Report
- Using the Overbudget Resources Report
- Using the Earned Value Report
- Using the Earned Value Over Time Report in Excel
- Evaluating Resource Allocation with Assignment Reports
- Using the Who Does What Report
- Using the Who Does What When Report
- Using the To-Do List
- Using the Overallocated Resources Report
- Using the Resource Availability Report in Visio
- Using the Resource Work Availability Report in Excel
- Using the Task Usage Report
- Using the Resource Usage Report
- Using the Resource Work Summary Report in Excel
- Using the Resource Remaining Work Report in Excel
- Using the Resource Status Report in Visio
- Revising a Built-In Report
- Building a Custom Report
- Saving Project Data Fields
- 13. Analyzing Progress Using Earned Value
- 12. Reporting Project Information
- V. Managing Multiple Projects
- 14. Managing Master Projects and Resource Pools
- 15. Exchanging Information Between Project Plans
- VI. Integrating Microsoft Project with Other Programs
- 16. Exchanging Information with Other Applications
- 17. Integrating Microsoft Project with Microsoft Excel
- Copying Between Microsoft Project and Excel
- Embedding Between Microsoft Project and Excel
- Linking Between Microsoft Project and Excel
- Importing and Exporting with Excel
- Producing a Visual Report of Project Data in Excel
- 18. Integrating Microsoft Project with Microsoft Outlook
- 19. Integrating Microsoft Project with Microsoft Visio
- VII. Managing Projects Across Your Enterprise
- 20. Understanding Enterprise Project Management
- 21. Administering Your Enterprise Project Management Solution
- Logging On and Off
- Managing Users and Permissions
- Administering the Enterprise Resource Pool
- Establishing the Enterprise Portfolio
- Standardizing Enterprise Project Elements
- Setting Up Team Member Work Pages
- Managing Pages, Views, and Reports
- Managing and Maintaining the Server
- 22. Managing Enterprise Projects and Resources
- Connecting to Your Project Server
- Working with Enterprise Projects
- Building Your Enterprise Project Team
- Finding Resources to Meet Your Needs
- Adding Enterprise Resources by Name
- Identifying Resource Attributes Using Custom Enterprise Fields
- Using Generic Resources as Placeholders
- Adding a Team Assignment Pool to Your Project Resource List
- Finding Enterprise Resources That Meet Specific Criteria
- Replacing an Existing Project Resource with an Enterprise Resource
- Matching an Existing Project Resource
- Matching and Replacing Generic Resources
- Proposing Tentative Resources
- Assigning Tasks to Enterprise Resources
- Finding Resources to Meet Your Needs
- Collaborating with Your Project Team
- Creating Proposals and Activity Plans
- 23. Participating on a Team Using Project Web Access
- Getting Started with Project Web Access
- Working on Your Assignments and Updates
- Submitting Text-Based Status Reports
- Logging Time Using Timesheets
- Setting Up E-Mail, Reminders, and Calendars
- Managing Resources in Project Web Access
- 24. Making Executive Decisions Using Project Web Access
- Getting Started with Project Web Access
- Viewing Project Portfolio Information
- Working with the Project Portfolio
- Working with Resource Information
- Analyzing and Reporting on Project Information
- Setting Your Alerts and Reminders
- VIII. Customizing and Managing Project Files
- 25. Customizing Your View of Project Information
- Customizing Views
- Customizing Tables
- Customizing Fields
- Working with Outline Codes
- Customizing Groups
- Customizing Filters
- Sharing Customized Elements Among Projects
- 26. Customizing the Microsoft Project Interface
- 27. Automating Your Work with Macros
- 28. Standardizing Projects Using Templates
- 29. Managing Project Files
- 25. Customizing Your View of Project Information
- A. Installing Microsoft Office Project 2007
- B. Online Resources for Microsoft Project
- C. Keyboard Shortcuts
- D. Index to Troubleshooting Topics
- E. About the Authors
- Index
- About the Author
- SPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’Reilly
To plan, track, and manage your project with Microsoft Office Project 2007, you enter a variety of detailed information regarding tasks, resources, assignments, durations, resource rates, and more. Office Project 2007, in turn, calculates certain entries to create even more information, including start dates, finish dates, costs, and remaining work. In Microsoft Project, more than 400 distinct pieces of information, including your own custom information, are available for tasks, resources, and assignments. The more tasks, resources, and assignments you have in your project, and the more custom capabilities you use, the more these pieces of information are multiplied.
There’s no way you could look at this mass of project information at one time and work with it in any kind of meaningful or efficient way. To solve this problem, Microsoft Project organizes and stores the information in a database. All information associated with an individual task, for example, is a single record in that database. Each piece of information in that record is a separate field (see Figure 4-1).
Figure 4-1. Each task represents a single record in your project database, with all associated information represented by individual fields.
Note
The project database is distinct from the SQL Server database that Microsoft Project uses to store data. In the SQL Server database, information about one task can actually be spread across multiple tables in multiple records.
When you need to look at or work with a particular set of information, you choose a particular view to be displayed in the Microsoft Project workspace. A view filters the project information in a specific way according to the purpose of the view and then presents that layout of information in the Microsoft Project workspace so you can easily work with it. More than 25 different views are built into Microsoft Project.
You can rearrange the project information presented in a view. You can sort information in many views by name, date, and so on. You can group information, for example, by complete versus incomplete tasks. You can filter information to see only the information you want, for example, only tasks that are assigned to a particular resource. These concepts and techniques are all presented in this chapter.
The means for organizing, managing, and storing the thousands of pieces of project information is the Microsoft Project database. There are three major categories in the project database:
Task information
Resource information
Assignment information
When you start entering project information, typically you enter tasks and associated information such as duration, date constraints, deadlines, and task dependencies. These all fall under the task information category.
Then you enter resource names and associated information such as standard rate, overtime rate, and working times calendar. These all fall under the resource information category.
As soon as you assign a resource to a task, this creates a new entity—the assignment, which is the intersection of task and resource. Information associated with an assignment includes the amount of work, the assignment start and finish dates, the cost for the assignment, and so on. These fall under the assignment information category.
Note
There are also three subcategories of project information: task-timephased, resource-timephased, and assignment-timephased. These subcategories are covered in the section titled Working with Usage Views later in this chapter.
Understanding these three categories is important when viewing project information. There are task views and resource views. The individual fields that make up all views are also classified as task, resource, or assignment fields, and can only be seen in their respective views. Likewise, there are filters and groups designed just for task views and other filters and groups designed just for resource views.
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