S.R.P** NICMAR 2 ND TERM- MICROSOFT PROJECT PLANNER Page 501 <<<<<MICROSOFT PROJECT PLANNER>>>> What Is Project Management? To understand project management we must first define what a project is. There are as many different definitions of a project as there are books written about it! So I would define project in the following terms: A project is a unique undertaking that has a clearly defined start and finish, and requires the management of time, resources, cost and quality. What Can Microsoft Project Do For You? . However, which ever project management software package you have, the machine cannot do four things: it cannot create the tasks for you it cannot create the logic relationships it does not know the duration of each task it cannot possibly know what resources you have to apply to the tasks So what can Project do for you? As such it can do the calculations accurately for you. Imagine doing the forward pass using calendar working days, taking into account national and company holidays! Doing the backward pass is even more mind boggling and prone to error! It makes visible the parameters it needs (have I forgotten something?) and any problems (like unacceptable circular logic). It allows "what-ifs?" to make changes to the project and see the effect of those changes before finalizing your plan and committing it to work. Once your plan is in action, it allows progress to be tracked so that you can make adjustments to keep on target. And finally it is a tremendous aid to communication: o There are built-in reports to print. o You can export to PowerPoint for presentations, to Word for detailed reports, to Excel to do intricate cost analyses, and to Access for manipulation of project data. o You can send information by e-mail. o You can pass information over networks and the Internet.
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Transcript
S.R.P** NICMAR 2ND TERM- MICROSOFT PROJECT PLANNER Page 501
<<<<<MICROSOFT PROJECT PLANNER>>>>
What Is Project Management?
To understand project management we must first define what a project is. There are as
many different definitions of a project as there are books written about it! So I would
define project in the following terms:
A project is a unique undertaking
that has a clearly defined start and
finish, and requires the
management of time, resources,
cost and quality.
What Can Microsoft Project Do For You?
. However, which ever project management software package you have, the machine
cannot do four things:
it cannot create the tasks for you
it cannot create the logic relationships
it does not know the duration of each task
it cannot possibly know what resources you have to apply to the tasks
So what can Project do for you?
As such it can do the calculations accurately for you. Imagine doing the forward
pass using calendar working days, taking into account national and company
holidays! Doing the backward pass is even more mind boggling and prone to
error!
It makes visible the parameters it needs (have I forgotten something?) and any
problems (like unacceptable circular logic).
It allows "what-ifs?" to make changes to the project and see the effect of those
changes before finalizing your plan and committing it to work.
Once your plan is in action, it allows progress to be tracked so that you can make
adjustments to keep on target.
And finally it is a tremendous aid to communication:
o There are built-in reports to print.
o You can export to PowerPoint for presentations, to Word for detailed
reports, to Excel to do intricate cost analyses, and to Access for
manipulation of project data.
o You can send information by e-mail.
o You can pass information over networks and the Internet.
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Microsoft Project: 2 - Entering Task Data
Firstly, let's look at the opening screen so that we can become familiar with its layout and terminology. Although there will be some detailed differences depending on your version of Project (this picture is from Project 2000), the basics are identical with the exception of the View bar which was introduced into Project 2000, and a Project Guide which appears down the left side of the Table in Project 2002. The Project Opening Screen
Working Area of the Screen The main working area of the screen is in two main parts: the Entry table on the left and the Gantt chart [named after the U.S. engineer H. L. Gantt (1861-1919)] on the right, separated by a divider bar. Entry Table The entry table will hold a listing of every task required by the project and will show calculated details for each task. Gantt Chart The Gantt chart will show bars drawn to represent the time span of each task against a calendar timescale. Divider Bar
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The vertical parallel lines forming the divider bar can be moved to the right to show more columns in the table or to the left to show more of the Gantt chart. Hovering the mouse over the bar will invoke a left-right arrow: click and drag to move the bar, and double-click to dock the divider bar neatly to the nearest column edge. Entering Data
Entry Bar Enter a task and the text also appears in the entry bar. Click on the tick or press enter to accept, or click the X to cancel. Edit by selecting a field and clicking the text that appears in the entry box, or by pressing F2 and it will be available for editing. Data can also be edited within the cell. Project will give the task an identification number (ID) of 1, fill in a default duration of 1 day?, show a 1-day bar on the Gantt chart and move the cursor down to highlight the next task cell. Data can also be edited within the cell. Entering Durations Project assumes the duration is 1 day? The question mark (introduced in Project 2000) indicates that this is an estimated or uncertain duration, and clicking on the duration cell can alter this. Enter the duration required as a number followed by a letter code and ? if you wish to retain the uncertainty indication. [Note: Months were introduced in Project 2000.]
m = min
= minute
em
= elapsed minute
h = hr = hour eh
= elapsed hour
d = dy = day ed
= elapsed day
w = wk = week ew
=elapsed week
mo
= mon
= month
emo
=elapsed month
y = yr = year ey
=elapsed year
A question mark can also be entered to indicate the duration is estimated or tentative
Alternatively, use the Spin Control by clicking on the up arrow to increase the duration and the down arrow to reduce. Elapsed duration is the amount of time a task will take to finish, based on a 24-hour day and a 7-day week, including holidays and other nonworking days. [Note that elapsed times should only be used for inanimate (material) resources or for tasks that are independent of resources, eg.,
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concrete curing or paint drying.] Any changes will appear in the entry bar—click the Tick to stay in that cell, press the Enter key or press the down arrow key to accept and move the cursor down to the next field. The duration of a month defaults to mean 20 working days, but this can be changed in Tools/Options/Calendar tab. Milestones To create a milestone, enter zero duration.
Outlining Project allows representation of a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in that it allows outlining. When outlining the tasks in a project schedule, it is organised so the structure of the project can be seen, making the schedule easier to manage. Outlining can:
· Arrange tasks in a hierarchical structure so it can be seen how subtasks fit within broader groups of tasks called summary tasks.
· Identify the major phases of the project with summary tasks. · Use either a top-down (enter summary tasks first) or bottom-up (enter
subtasks first) approach to building the schedule. · Display only the summary tasks for the project. · Create reports that include subtasks, summary tasks, or both. · Display the project using a task numbering system called a Work
Breakdown Structure (WBS). A task is moved to a lower level by indenting or demoting it. A summary task is created by demoting the task directly following it (in the order of task ID numbers). A task can be moved to a higher level by outdenting or promoting it, unless it is already at the highest level.
Select Project/Outline… or click on the appropriate tool button to indent or outdent. A Summary task will then appear bold (black) and have outline symbols beside the task name. A - (minus sign) indicates that the summary is expanded, i.e., all the subtasks
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are showing at the next level. Clicking on the - sign will close down the summary so that only the summary bar is showing (note the missing task ID numbers). It will then sport a + sign, that can be clicked to reverse the process. Similar + and - signs are available in the Formatting toolbar. Greater choice of the levels to be revealed can be selected from the pick list invoked from the Show tool button, introduced with Project 2000—earlier versions have a double-plus button to show them all. Manipulating Gantt Bars Task Selection In the Gantt chart, move the mouse pointer over the centre of a Gantt bar, and the pointer will turn into a 4-way arrow. An information box will appear to aid selection of the correct task.
Changing the Start Date When the 4-way arrow appears, click and hold down the left mouse button and drag left or right and an information box will show the Start and Finish dates. These dates will change as the bar is dragged, leaving the duration the same—release the button when satisfied. A constraint indicator will appear in the Indicator column: hover the mouse pointer over the indicator to read constraint details.
Note! Resist changing start or finish dates by typing in the data or by manipulating the bars with the mouse, as this will cause a constraint date to be imposed thus losing flexibility. Make sure that was what was intended. If the new start date coincides with a non-working day, a Planning Wizard will allow the option to Move the task to the next working day or Make the non-working day into a working day. As with most Wizards, there is an option to prevent further activation of this Wizard by clicking the box Don't tell me about this again. In doing so Project will assume the first (default) setting will apply to any subsequent occasions.
If, however, the new start date is near to the end of an adjacent Gantt bar, another Wizard will allow the option to Link them or to Move the task without adding a link. If linking is allowed, then no constraint will be set, as the predecessor will drive its start date.
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Changing the Duration To change the duration of a task, move the mouse pointer the right end of a Gantt bar and the pointer will turn into a right-pointing arrow. Click and drag to the right and an information box will show the Finish date and Duration that will change to reflect the lengthening of the bar.
To Indicate Progress Move the mouse pointer the left end of a Gantt bar and the pointer will change into a % right-pointing arrow. Click and drag to the right and an information box will show the Complete Through date.
The Complete Through date will change to reflect the percentage duration completed and will show as a black bar within the task bar.
Click and drag from the right end of the progress mark will allow editing. When progress or actual data has been entered, moving the pointer to the left end of the bar will turn the pointer to a left-pointing arrow, allowing the start date to be changed to reflect reality.
Splitting Tasks Tasks can be split to show breaks in the schedule. Click on the Split Task tool button in the Standard toolbar, then click on the appropriate part of the Gantt bar and drag to the right. Tasks can be split many times. To remove the split, click on a split section to the right of the first section and drag to the left until the gap closes.
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Microsoft Project: 3 - Entering the Logic
Entering Dependencies
A dependency link can be entered in several ways. When the link is created, Project will
calculate the new start of the successor task, and move the bar to its new date.
Click And Drag
On the Gantt chart, position the mouse pointer on the centre of the predecessor task
bar until the mouse cursor turns into a 4-way arrow. Hold down the left mouse button
and drag up or down until it changes to a link image.
A Finish-to-Start Link box will show to help you link to the correct task.
Drag the pointer over the successor task to be linked and release the mouse button. A
link line will join the bars in the default finish-to-start relationship. Although click and
drag works, it is not very convenient particularly when the successor task requires you
to scroll to a remote task, as you cannot control the speed of scrolling. Beware of
momentarily releasing the left button as this could cause the link to be mis-directed. If
you hover the mouse over a link line, a link box will appear giving details of the selected
link (not in Project 98), and double clicking will show a Task Dependency form from
which you can delete the link (see later).
Link Tasks Tool
Click on the Task Name of the predecessor task to highlight it. Hold down the Ctrl key
and click on the successor task. Select Edit/Link Tasks or Ctrl/F2 or click on the Link
Tasks tool button to create a finish-to-start relationship. Several tasks can be linked at
the same time by sequentially selecting them and clicking the Link Tasks tool button.
Task Form
Click on the Task Name of the successor task or its bar to highlight it. If selecting the
bar, a tip will appear giving details of the selected task. Select Window/Split or right-
click in a free area of the Gantt chart and select Split. A combination view (an
extremely useful technique bye the way) will be seen with the Gantt chart in the upper
pane and the Task Form in the lower pane.
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Enter the ID numbers or the Predecessor Name of the linkages required in the
predecessor part of the form (bottom pane right-hand side). If the predecessor is off the
screen, you can scroll up or down to find precisely the task you want without losing the
focus of the cursor, so having found it, just type its ID and it will automatically enter the
ID in the correct place. You could also click in the predecessor area and select the task
from the pick list, though you have to be careful if there is more than one task of the
same name. Select Previous or Next buttons on the form or press Enter to go to the
next task.
Using the Task form is the most positive method of entry and is less likely to
cause errors and is thus the recommended technique. Lag times (or Lead times as
negative Lag) or other task relationships can also be entered (see later).
Unlinking Tasks
To unlink a task from its predecessor, select the unwanted ID in the Task Form and
press the delete key. Alternatively, double-click on a link line in the Gantt chart (a bit
fiddly) to bring up the Task Dependency dialog box and select Delete (you can also use
this box to change the dependency Type or Lag—see later).
Or select the linked tasks then Edit/Unlink Tasks, or click the Unlink Tasks button on
the Standard toolbar.
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Logical Task Relationships
There are four Types of task relationships in Project:
The illustration above shows the following diagram display:
Finished-toStart (FS)—Task (B) cannot start until another task (A) finishes.
Start-to-start (SS)—Task (B) cannot start until another task (A) starts.
Finish-to-finish (FF)—Task (B) cannot finish until another task (A) finishes.
Start-to-finish (SF)—Task (B) cannot finishe until another task (A) starts.
Lag or Lead
Lag or Lead (which is entered as negative lag) can be entered in the Task Dependency
Form or in the Task Form to enhance the scheduling of the requirement. For example,
you want to lay a cable across a field; you might estimate the job in 3 parts: dig trench
(3 days), lay cable (1 day) and fill trench (3 days). If these were scheduled as a chain of
tasks it would take 7 days. However, you don't necessarily have to wait for the trench to
be completely dug before you can start to lay the cable. Thus, you could have a Start-
to-Start relationship with a lag of 1 day: i.e., the cable laying can start after the first day
of digging the trench. A bit of thought would lead to the conclusion that filling the trench
also doesn't have to await completion of the laying of the cable. Thus, by using lag the
whole project can be finished earlier, as the cable laying part can be done within the
total time and the trench filling will have only 1 day left after the cable is laid: i.e.,
totalling 5 days. This type of project scheduling is known as a progressive feed.
(Actually, by also splitting the lay cable task into three, the total Duration can be
reduced to 4.33 days.)
Gantt Layout
Selecting Format/Layout or right-clicking in a blank area of the Gantt chart and
selecting Layout will allow the layout of the Gantt chart to be changed. Here a different
link style can be chosen or turned off altogether.
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Microsoft Project: 4 - Manipulating the Data
Manipulating Data
Selecting Data
Again, like most Windows programs, you can click to select data, and click and drag to
highlight adjacent data. Selecting one piece of data and Shift-click to another piece of
data will select all in between. You can also use Ctrl-click to select non-contiguous data.
Selecting A Cell
Select data by clicking on the cell containing it and the selected cell will be highlighted
with a black border.
Selecting A Column
Click on the column heading to select the column and all the cells in the whole column
will be highlighted.
Selecting A Row
Select all the data in a row (which includes all data fields in the record for that task) by
clicking on the row heading, which is the cell holding the identification number (ID). All
the selected row cells will be highlighted.
Selecting All Rows And Columns
To select all of the rows and columns in a sheet (for instance, when copying and
pasting project data into another application) click the Select All button: the cell
immediately above ID 1 and to the left of the column headings.
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Go To
Sometimes the Gantt bar is not visible on screen. To make it visible, select Edit/Go
To…, Ctrl+G, F5 or select a task in the Gantt table and press the Go To Selected
Task tool button.
This procedure will also work in other Views that show time scaled data.
Deleting Data
Very Important Note: If one or more cells are selected, pressing the Delete key
will delete the entire selected rows, and all of the selected records will be lost
(and you have only one chance to Undo). In Project 2002, only the cell(s) will be
deleted and a Smart Tag will give you the final option of deleting the cell or the
whole task.
Rows
Select the rows to be deleted. Press the Delete key, select Delete Task from the Edit
menu, right-click and select Delete, or click on the Cut tool button. If you delete a
summary task, all of its subtasks are deleted too. After you delete a task, Project will
automatically renumber the remaining tasks.
Columns
Select the headings of the columns to be deleted. Press the Delete key, Edit/Hide
Column, right-click and chooseHide Column, or you can click the boundary line
between columns and drag to the left. In each case, the information is not lost, the data
fields still exist and can be shown by re-inserting the column: i.e. the column information
is simply hidden from view.
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Cells
Select the cells to be deleted. Select Edit/Cut(Cell), Edit/Clear/Contents, right-click
and Cut(Cell), right-click and Clear Contents, press Ctrl+Delete (Clear),
Shift+Delete (cut), Ctrl+X (cut) or click the Cut tool button.
They can also be deleted individually from the Entry Box on the Entry Bar.
Moving Data
When moving data, whether it's within a project, between projects or to other
applications like spreadsheets or documents, it is often easiest to cut and paste data
fields rather than using click and drag.
Moving Rows
Select the row(s) by clicking the row heading(s) (the ID numbers) release the left
button, then click again in the row heading and when you see a 4-way cursor, drag to
the new position. A grey T bar will help you to find the desired position between two
existing rows. Selecting a summary task will automatically include all its children as
soon as you start to drag. It is often easier, therefore, to close down the summary by
clicking the little minus sign before dragging and then clicking the plus sign to open it up
again..
Moving Columns
Columns can be re-ordered using the drag and drop editing method in Project 2002. In
earlier versions, to re-order columns, a new table must be defined, or you can insert a
column in its new positions and delete the old one.
Copying Data
Select the rows, columns or cells to be copied. Select Edit/Copy… or right-click and
select Copy…, or Ctrl+C, or click on the Copy button.
The selected fields will be copied to the Clipboard.
Click where the top left hand corner of the data is required to appear. Select Edit/Paste
or right-click and select Paste, or Ctrl+V or click on the Paste tool button.
Note! Data can only be copied to fields that are of like format, e.g. monetary data can
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only be copied to monetary fields.
Inserting Rows and Columns
Inserting Rows
Select all or part of a row—the new row will be inserted above the selected row. Press
the Insert key or select Insert/New Task. To insert more than one new row, press the
Insert key the requisite number of times or select a set of rows and Insert—Project will
insert the same number of empty rows as rows selected and renumber the rows that
follow the inserted rows. Drag the row boundary in the row heading to change the
individual row's height, however, in Project 98 such action will change the height of all
rows.
Inserting Columns
Select all or part of a column—the new column is inserted to the left of the column
selected. Select Insert/Column… or select a column heading and press the Insert key.
From the Column Definition dialog box, type the Field Name or click on the drop-down
arrow, and select from the pick list. (Pressing the first letter will go to the first field
beginning with that letter.) If required, type in a new Title and select the Alignment and
Width or select Best Fit. After the column has been inserted, dragging the boundary
line to the right of the column heading can change its width. A double-click when the
right-left arrow appears will also obtain a best fit. Project 2002 also allows you to
choose text wrapping in the heading.
Undo
If the changes are not required to be permanent, particularly to recover immediately
deleted data, use the undo facility. Clicking the Undo tool button can reverse most
actions.
Otherwise, use Edit/Undo… or Ctrl+Z.
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Cut data is cut to the Clipboard where it can be recovered by Edit/Undo Cut, right-
click and select Paste or by using the Paste tool button.
Spell Check
Select Tools/Spelling, or press F7, or click on the Spell Check tool button.
When the spell checker finds a word that is not in a dictionary, it displays the word in the
Spelling dialog box. If the suggested correction in the Change To box is required,
choose Change or Change All. To specify a different correction select a word from the
Suggestions list or type the spelling wanted, then select Change. To skip a suggestion
choose Ignore or Ignore All. Select Add to add the word to the custom dictionary. Click
OK when Project displays the message: Spell Check Complete.
Auto Correct
Project uses the standard Windows AutoCorrect facility. Tools/AutoCorrect… will
invoke the settings.
Find and Replace
Project's find and replace facility is invoked through the Edit/Find (Ctrl+F) or
Edit/Replace (Ctrl+H). Both bring up a dialog box where the text to be found is typed in
the Find what: box. The Look in field: to be searched and the Test: to be applied can be
selected from the pick lists. For the replace facility, in the Replace dialog box, insert the
text in the Replace with: box. Project then finds the first occurrence of the text and gives
the opportunity to Replace or Replace All or Find Next.
Auto link
A word of warning! Project has a default setting to automatically link tasks. When
inserting a task, the links between the previous and subsequent tasks will be broken
and re-set to the inserted task in a chain. Similarly, if a task is moved, the gap produced
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is re-linked with a finish to start relationship. With complicated logic diagrams, this can
cause apparent havoc and you will need to re-examine all the connecting links to
ensure Project has guessed correctly! It is my strong advice to turn off this facility in the
defaults set up in Tools/Options.../Schedule tab: Autolink inserted or moved tasks
before you even start to type in tasks.
Planning Wizards
Planning Wizards can aid many scheduling tasks, pointing out possible problems and
prompting for clarification of ambiguous actions. Most Planning Wizards will appear
automatically, but one special Wizard helps specifically with the Gantt Chart layout.
Gantt Chart Wizard
Select Format > Gantt Chart Wizard or right-click the Gantt Chart and select Gantt
Chart Wizard or click on the Gantt Chart Wizard tool button.
Follow the options on screen to customize the chart. For now, go as far as Step 2 and
select the Critical Path radio button, Finish/Format It/Exit Wizard. You will now see
the Gantt Chart with the Critical Path shown in red. Other options include the colour,
pattern, size and end shape of the bars, milestones, and summary bars, type of link,
display of text (e.g., Resource information or dates) to be associated with each bar,
baseline and slack. More of this in a later lesson.
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Microsoft Project: 5—Working With Resources
Resource Allocation
Entering a Resource
You will be pleased to know that entering a resource is one of the easiest steps in
Project: what happens afterwards is another story!
Select Tools > Resources > Assign Resources…, ALT+F10 or click on the Assign
Resources tool button:
This will activate the Assign Resources dialog box, as shown in the image below.
The dialog box ―floats‖, i.e., remains on screen until it is closed, allowing work in the
active view while the dialog box is visible (click and drag on the title bar to reposition it).
Because of this, always click in the appropriate window to make it active before entering
data, otherwise you will enter the data in the wrong place. So, in the dialog box, click in
the first Name cell and type in the name of the resource, and press Enter. There, that
was easy wasn‘t it?
Assigning a Resource
Once the resources have been entered into Project, using the
same Assign Resources dialog box, select the task, then select
the resource and then click the Assign button. Alternatively,
move the mouse pointer into the cell to the left of the name of the resource. The pointer
will change to an arrow attached to the Assign Resources icon. Hold down the left
button and drag it to the task and release.
When assigned, there will be a Tick in the cell next to the resource name, the Units will
register the default setting of 100%, and the resource name will appear to the right of
the Gantt bar. If more or less than 100% is wanted, enter the number required before
assigning the resource.
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Removing a Resource Assignment
Select the tasks to which the resource is assigned and in the Assign Resources dialog
box, select the resource to be removed then click the Remove button.
Effort Driven Scheduling
Project is an effort driven program. This is defined as a scheduling method that bases
a task's duration on the amount of work the task requires and the number of resource
units assigned to it: i.e., calculation is based on the formula:
Resource Units X Duration = Work
The values in the formula are set up for each task when a resource is first assigned;
subsequent changes will be governed by the formula. I can‘t do better than quote from
the Help pages:
"When people are assigned or removed from a task, Microsoft Project will
extend or shorten the duration of the task to accommodate the additional or
fewer resources applied to the task, but it will not change the total work for
the task. This is called effort-driven scheduling and is the default Microsoft
Project uses when assigning resources to tasks.
"As resources are added to a task, the total work on the task stays the
same. The amount of work distributed to the resources assigned to the task,
however, will change.
"Effort-driven scheduling only takes effect when resources are added
to or removed from a task (the emphasis is mine—Mike). Effort-driven
calculation rules are not applied when changes are made to work, duration,
and unit values for resources already assigned to a task."
When working with effort-driven scheduling, keep the following in mind:
The effort-driven calculations will apply only after the first resource is assigned to
the task. Once a resource is assigned, the work value will not change as new
resources are assigned to or removed from the same task.
The effort-driven calculations will not be applied to multiple resources that are
assigned at the same time and that are the first assignments on a task. After this
initial assignment of multiple resources, however, the work value will not change
as new resources are assigned to or removed from the same task.
If the assigned Task Type is Fixed Units, then assigning additional resources will
shorten the duration of the task.
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If the assigned Task type is Fixed Duration, then assigning additional resources
will decrease the individual unit values for resources.
If the assigned Task type is Fixed Work, then assigning additional resources will
shorten the duration of the task.
Okay, enough of the Help pages! Resource assignment can be very complicated as you
can see. My advice is, if at all possible, keep to one resource per task and it is difficult
to go wrong or fail to understand what‘s going on. Remember, and I repeat: Effort-
driven scheduling only takes effect when resources are added to or removed
from a task. So, after the first assignment of a resource, effort driven scheduling has no
effect unless you subsequently add or remove resources from the task.
Resource Leveling
After assigning resources, it is likely that at certain times there will be more work
assigned than there are resources available. In Project, leveling means resolving
resource conflicts or overallocations by delaying tasks. Leveling requires delaying tasks
until resources are available, thus enabling the project to be finished, though often
resulting in a later project finish date.
Overallocations
To see overallocations, I‘d like to suggest my favourite way for dealing with
resources, and that is to use the split screen technique that I introduced in the
March issue. I repeat: select Window > Split or right-click in a free area of the
Gantt chart and select Split. A combination view will be seen with the Gantt chart in the
upper pane and the Task Form in the lower pane. Click in the lower pane to make it
active and select View > Resource Graph, or click the Resource Graph icon in the
view bar.
Note! To view the resource graph from a split screen, a task must be selected that has
the resource assigned.
Resource Graph
The resource
graph will indicate
the peak usage
rate of that
resource as a
histogram.
Overallocated
resources are shown in red text and the amount of overallocation is shown red on the
graph. Use this resource view to display information about a single resource or group of
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resources over time. If you have assigned different resources, use the horizontal scroll
bar on the left side under the resource name label to see the others.
Automatic Levelling
When you have resources that are overallocated, you will need to level the project to
ensure that no resources are assigned to work more than the standard working day.
Project levels the resource allocations by delaying tasks until the resource becomes
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default 8 hour day or 40 hour week).
Now, let's say it's going to take too long at 10 days, and to speed it up we assign
another Gardener from our pool. So, change the Units value to 200% and click OK.
Note that against the Gantt bar, the number of resources assigned is placed after the
resource name if the Units are other than 100%. As this task is Effort Driven, the effort
(Work) remains the same at 80 hours and thus Project reduces the Duration to 5 days
- mission accomplished.
Play around with assigning more Gardeners and see the Duration reduce each time,
and try less than 100%, say 50% meaning a Gardener only works half time per day (i.e.
4 hours per day, and thus to achieve 80 hours work, the Duration goes out to 20 days.)
OK, changing the number of Units using the same resources from a pool is quite
straight forward and works as one might expect with effort driven tasks. Restore the
Units to 100% and the Duration should still read 10 days.
Different Resources
Fred from next door is a keen gardener and offers to help out. Click in the next
Resource Name cell under the Gardeners and type in Fred and click OK.
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As you would expect the Duration again halves as they now both share the work: 40
hours each.
Suppose the task was still taking too long and you decide to add another Gardener.
Click on the Gardeners‘ Units and increase to 200% and OK.
You will see no change to the amount of work and the Duration doesn't change as you
would have hoped. What has happened to the effort driven formula now? Well, you‘ve
presented Project with problem it cannot answer without guidance from you. It still
upholds the 80 hours of work, but each Gardener is now only doing 20 hours whilst poor
Fred slaves on for his original 40 hours. Thus, Fred becomes the driving resource as he
still needs 5 days to finish. Try adding more and more Gardeners – the Duration
remains the same based on Fred‘s assignment. Equally, if you put in one gardener
working half time (50%), the Duration goes back to 10 days, as that resource becomes
the driving resource. (Remember always to click the OK button whenever you‘re happy
with the changes in order to get Project to calculate the new data. When you do, the
buttons change to Previous and Next to allow you to progress through the tasks.)
You can see that blindly adding resources to a multi-resourced task my not achieve the
reduction in Duration you want. You have to engage brain and be selective in your
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choice of resource assignment.
Now let‘s try a different assignment. Remove Fred and assign 200% to Gardeners and
ensure the Duration is 5 days with 80 hours Work. Now reassign Fred.
The Work is assigned equally between the 3 resources at 26.67% (Project rounds to 2
decimal places, though the real value is used in calculations) each, reducing the
Duration to 3.33 days. Try experimenting with these assignments and try adding Mary
and Joe, and also a material resource like Bricks, until you run out of explanation of why
Project calculates as it does. Isn‘t it easy to get into a mess!
In real life I have two prime tips:
Always use the split screen technique when you have more than one resource to
assign so that you can see all the elements and the resulting calculations that Project
makes.
If you run into problems, delete all the assignments from the task, reset the
Duration and reassign them all to read what you want before you click the OK button:
this in effect becomes the first assignment to that task and thus the effort driven
formula will not come into effect until you click OK.
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Microsoft Project: 11 – Task Types
Effort Driven – Task Type
Resource Units X Duration = Work
IRemember, the values in the formula are set up for each task when a resource is first
assigned; subsequent changes will be governed by the formula.
there are several places in Project where you assign resources, but as with multiple
resources on one task, you need a view that shows all the relevant parameters. If you
want to investigate and use the different settings that can be made to the Tasks, you
need a view where all the parameters are shown. Again recommend using the same
split screen technique as we used last month. Using the same example for a project,
make a garden with an initial plan that includes a pool of Gardeners. Make it start on 1
Mar 04, create a 10 day task: Make Terraces, select it and then Window/Split. Now
assign a Gardener from the pool to get the following view:
In the bottom pane you can see the Effort driven box and the Task type selection. Use
the drop-down arrow to see that the Task Type can be Fixed Units (the default), Fixed
Duration or Fixed Work.
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Effect of Changes to Task Type
So let’s experiment. First remove the Effort driven check and notice that the adjacent
Previous button changes to OK. You must click the OK button to set Project in this new
mode before changing any data – the button changing to OK, I hope, will prompt you to
remember this. With Project in the Fixed Units default mode, try changing the Work.
What happened? The Duration changes as Project won’t change the Units as that’s
what you’ve told it to do. Now change the Duration – as you now would expect, the Work
changes.
Try selecting Fixed Duration (don’t forget to click OK before continuing) and then
change the Units and then the Work. Finally, select Fixed Work and change Units and
Duration. I think you’ll find this straightforward and Project does what you expected.
A little experimentation along those lines shows how you can get Project to do what you
want, provide you’re aware of the formula! You will have seen that Project will not
change the element you’ve selected to be fixed.
Changes to the Fixed Parameter
However, there’s nothing to stop you from changing the parameter that you’ve “fixed” –
the fixing is only an order to Project not to change it. So, Project has a built-in bias
towards keeping the Units fixed if possible and then Work. In the Garden project, reset it
to the original 100% units, 10 days and 80 hours of work. Try Fixed Units, and then
change the Units – you will see that the Duration changes rather than the Work:
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However, if we select Fixed Work and then change Work, it is also the Duration
changes rather than the Units this time:
So, I'm sure as you have guessed, if we try the final type, Fixed Duration and then
change the Duration, it is the Work that changes not the Units.
To summarise, therefore:
Changing Fixed Units will adjust Duration.
Changing Fixed Work will adjust Duration.
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Changing Fixed Duration will adjust Work.
To put them all together, see the table below - I have it printed out on a card propped up
in front of me whenever I want to set up anything other than the default effort driven and
fixed Units.
Default Setting
If you would like to change the
default parameters that Project
will use, you must do this before you enter any data. Open Tools/Options…/Schedule tab
and select the Task Type you want from the pick list and also select the box for New
tasks are effort driven. If you wish these settings to be applied, not only to this project,
but to all new projects, then click the Set as Default button before clicking OK.
Work = Resource Units X Duration
Field that
you change
Field
calculated if
the task is
Fixed Units
Field
calculated if
the task is
Fixed Work
Field
calculated if
the task is
Fixed
Duration
Work Duration is
recalculated
Duration is
recalculated
Units are
recalculated
Duration Work is
recalculated
Units are
recalculated
Work is
recalculated
Units Duration is
recalculated
Duration is
recalculated
Work is
recalculated
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All new data entries will then obey your settings. However, if you have already made
assignments and you want to change their settings, select all the tasks first, then enter
the changes you want in Project/Task Information…/Advanced tab. When you click OK,
the new settings will be applied "globally" to all the selected tasks.
Remember my two prime tips:
Always use the split screen technique when you have more than one
resource to assign so that you can see all the parameters and the resulting
calculations that Project makes.
If you run into problems, delete all the assignments from the task, select
the parameter you want Fixed click on OK to set that mode and then reset
the data to read what you want before you click the OK button.
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Microsoft Project: 12 – Working Pattern
T
Calendar Options
the importance of setting up the project calendars before entering any task data. This is
because the settings in Tools/Options…/Calendar tab work for the future and not the
past. So, if you’d like to open up that little Garden project with a Make Terraces task
we’ve been playing with, we’ll set up some different calendar times. It would also help if
we could see the times of day, so in Tools/Options…/View tab select a Date Format: 28
Jan 12:33.
Incidentally, I’m using clips from Project 2003, but earlier versions are very similar.
Split the screen via Window/Split, noting that the Make Terraces task has a 10 day
Duration with a resource called Gardeners entered to give 100% Units and 80 hours of
Work. Now reset the Start Date to 3 May 04. The easiest way to do this is to use the
Adjust_Dates macro in the Analysis toolbar (or Tools/Macro/macros… in earlier
versions), or you can reset the project Start Date in Project/Project Information… dialog.
Fiscal Year
Now, as we learned in Lesson 7, the settings in Tools/Options…/Calendar tab tell project
how to represent calendar data. So, the Week starts on: and the Fiscal year starts in:
settings tell Project to start from the day/year you choose.
Please note that the Fiscal year can be misleading, particularly in earlier versions of
Project. If you change it to, say April, then the fiscal year for 2004/5 will start in April
2004, but it does not finish until the end of May 2005. The Gantt chart timescale thus
does not change the year on 1 January but waits until 1 April as can be seen in this clip:
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Try it out and see the result. My advice is therefore; if you need a fiscal report, change
the setting to what you want and when you’ve finished, change the fiscal year setting
back to January as this will avoid confusion.
Standard (Project Calendar) Working Hours
So, let’s suppose we want our Garden project to work form 09:00 to 16:00, this will give
us a 6 hour working day and a 30 hour working week. This might be done to allow a
couple of hours per day for resources to do other things. Enter these details:
There is a Set as Default button which will tell Project to always use these settings on all
future projects.
Have a look at the Duration of the Make Terraces task: it is now 13.33 days. This
because the 80 hours of work at 6 hours per day takes 80/6 = 13.33 days, but still starts
at 0800 and finishes at 1700.
Try entering new task “Swimming Pool” for 10 days. You will see it still starts at 08:00
because new tasks are starting at the project start date of 3 May 04 08:00. This setting
can be changed to Start on Current Date by selecting from the pick list for New tasks: in
the Tools/Options…/Schedule tab.
Change the project Start Date to 09:00 (Project/Project Information...) and you will see
both tasks now start at 09:00 - we’re getting there! Meanwhile, assign Gardeners to the
Swimming Pool task at 100% (click in the Resource Name cell and use the drop-down
arrow to select from the pick list – better than typing in the name in case you get the
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spelling wrong). You will see the assignment is 60 hours, which is based on our new
working week. Now observe the Gantt bars for each task, they don’t seem to tie in with
the number of days the Duration requires.
Ah but it does! You see, Project is still using the default calendar of 8 to 5, 40 hour
week. So we need to change that too – Tools/Change Working Time… Click and drag
across the weekday letters (M, T, W, Th, F) so that the whole of the weekday part is
highlighted in black, and change the start time to 09:00 and the Finish to 16:00 and click
OK.
You should now see that the Swimming Pool task is correctly showing on the Gantt
chart as 10 working days as that task was entered after we changed the
Tools/Options…/Calendar times: ie that was in the future.
Whereas, the Make Terraces task is still showing 13.33 days, as Project does not
change what you entered in the past – hence the importance of getting the working times
and calendars set up correctly before entering data. You will now have to make the
decision: was the Make Terraces task an estimate of 10 days Duration or 80 hours of
Work? If the 80 hours was correct, you can leave well alone at 13.33 days, but if the
original estimate was 10 days, then you need to retype the Duration of 10 days giving 60
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hours of work – let’s do that.
Note that, if you zoom in to the maximum (15 minute intervals) you can see the tasks
begin at 9 or 09:00 and finish at 16 or 16:00 as we demanded.
Shifts
Let’s have a look at setting up shift patterns. Firstly, enter a new task for the Flower
Beds, give it a 7 day duration and assign a resource Fred who should be working 42
hours. Let’s say that Fred only works afternoons, say 13:00 to 19:30 with half an hour
for tea at 16:00, ie a 6 hour working day. If we want a resource to work different shifts,
then we must set up a new calendar specifically for that resource. In Tools/Change
Working Time… (if it is greyed out, you are still in the bottom pane – click in the top pane
to make it active), select the Resource name Fred from the pick list in the For: box.
Again, select the weekdays and enter the times 13:00 to 16:00 and then 16:30 to 19:30.
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Make sure the radio button for Nondefault working time is set and then click OK. If you
are still zoomed in to 15 minutes, then you can see Fred’s task now starts at 13:00 and
finishes at 19:30, as we directed.
Resource Gantt Chart
Supposing we wanted to show a Gantt chart for Fred, then we can show Fred’s
calendar. Format/Timescale…/Non-working time tab; in Calendar: select Fred, and
select a Colour and Pattern, OK.
You can see the selected pattern in the Preview panel as you change the style. The
resulting Gantt chart is now based on Fred’s working pattern.
Whilst we are here, we could make quite a powerful report by filtering for Fred’s tasks
(Project/Filtered For: All Tasks/Using Resource… and select Fred from the pick list) and
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giving Fred a print out of his tasks with his calendar applied.
Night Shift
Finally, if you want a night shift, there is a little trick you need to know. Project’s
calendars start and end at midnight. So, to set up a shift working from 20:00 to 08:00,
we have to do it in 2 stages: 00:00 to 08:00 and 20:00 to 00:00 (insert any breaks
similarly).
Summary
To summarize: the values in Tools/Options…/Calendar tab for the working week or day
affect the way project presents your entries in the Duration field. If, in the task Duration
field, you type in 1 week, Project looks to the setting you've made to define the number
of hours (and thus man-hours) that a week contains, and similarly for the working day.
Equally, if you don't specify a time, a task starts at the default setting of 08:00, and if you
schedule from the finish, tasks will end at the default of 17:00, both leaving the Duration
to determine the other date. So, set these default times first. Remember that it is best to
do this before entering any data as changes to Tools > Options generally apply to the
future entry of data and not what has already been entered.
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Microsoft Project: 13 - Costs
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First and foremost, Microsoft Project is NOT an accounting package. It is not intended to give, and it does not provide, the facilities to do detailed accounting or financial management. It will not provide cost-accounting, pay-roll figures, or the tracking of inventory costs, overhead costs, salaries, or inflation costs. It does not handle Purchase Orders, Change Orders, Asset Requests, Approvals, Purchase Orders Invoices, payments and retentions, and is rotten at keeping track of money to the level of accuracy you need for making payments. It is not interested in profit, revenues, payables, receivables, time-and-billing, professional fees and it does not track Vendors or Vendor Contracts. All these are facets of accounting and time-and-billing programs. Managing the overall costs of employment of a resource is a job for accounting applications, not project management applications and Microsoft Project is no different. It is not concerned with the costs to the company of the resource doing anything else other than the specific project tasks.
So what does it do? Well, Project is a critical path scheduling tool and oriented to
scheduling and managing work, not finances. The costs in Project are bottom-up
budgets - predictions of what something will cost, not top-down limits on how much
you're allowed to spend. It does cost estimating and tracking, but that is only for
budgeting and progress tracking purposes. All it is concerned is with is the direct costs
of getting the deliverables within the specific project done and has no direct provision
for overheads and other costs of doing business.
Resource Costs
Let’s start with setting up some resource costs. Create a new project starting on 31 May 04 (discard the old Garden project we were using last time as it will probably still have non-standard calendars set up) and enter a task ―Make Terraces‖ with 10 days Duration. Now assign Fred to that task. Check from a split screen that he is assigned 80 hours of Work. Double-click Fred’s name (although you can double-click on a resource’s name in many views, like the Resource Sheet, that show the resource name) and in the resulting Resource Information dialog, click on the Costs tab. Click in the first Standard Rate cell, enter ―20‖ and press Return. Project will show the per hour rate.
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The currency shown is that selected in Tools/Options.../View tab, where you can enter
a default currency. However, you can have only one currency per project.
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Having entered 20, when you press Return, the ―£‖ (or whatever you have set up) and
―/hr‖ will automatically be inserted for you, and the cursor will drop down to the next cell,
ready for another entry. Equally, if Fred was paid by the week or year, then you will
have to enter, say, 500/w or 20000/y – try it!
Standard Rate
Ah! But what is the Standard Rate, did I hear you say? Well, it should not be solely his
wages, but the cost to the project of using this man. It should include his wages, training
costs, holidays, pension scheme, etc, i.e. whatever it costs the company to use this
man on this project compared to whatever else he could be doing to earn money for the
company. These figures should be obtained from the company‘s accounting
department. Many companies produce a series of equivalent, rationalised or equalised
wages to cover a variety of employees – use these costs as your ―standard‖.
Remember you‘re not using a cost-accounting system, but inputting figures on which
you can budget and track the project‘s costs.
Now, these rates are used by Project to calculate the cost of each task on which Fred is
employed. Project will calculate by the minute ( actually by 1/10th of a minute,
irrespective of the units entered in the Standard Rate cell) to arrive at £1600 (£20/hour *
80 hours). You can see the resulting task Total Cost from the Gantt Chart view, then
View/Table: Entry/Cost.
The Cost tab allows profiling of the resource‘s cost. The Effective Date will show ―- -― if
the resource is available at the start of the project, otherwise it will show the first date on
which he is available. Profiling allows Project to take into account changes in costs as
time goes by.
Suppose Fred has a 5% increase in wages from 7 Jun 04, enter that and when you
press Return, Project will calculate the new rate as £21/h.
And take that into account for the task‘s costs (5 days to 6 Jun at £20/h = £800 and
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another 5 days from 7 Jun at £21/h = £840) which now total £1640.
You can also check costs from the Gantt Chart view: split the screen, double-click in
the lower pane and select Resource Cost.
Costs can be applied by project at the beginning or end of the task, or spread evenly
throughout the task (prorated). In the Resource Information dialog, click the drop-down
arrow in the Cost accrual: box and select from the pick list.
A total of 25 different rate levels can be applied to allow for cost changes with time. In
each, standard, overtime and per use (e.g. a machine might cost £1000 per use) rates
can be entered. In addition, if resources will work on various tasks that require different
base rates (e.g. a different rate for on-site working and another for in-office working), up
to five different base rates can be assigned in tabs A to E for each resource so that the
correct rate for each task assignment can be selected. From the Resource Usage view,
double-click on the Terraces task to bring up the Assignment Information dialog. Here
you can select the appropriate Cost rate table from the pick list.
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Overtime
Overtime costs will be accounted for provided work is entered as overtime. Project does not automatically calculate additional hours as overtime unless they are specifically assigned as overtime work. Assignment is made in the Resource Work form viewed from a split Gantt chart screen, by right-clicking and selecting.
Type the number of overtime hours for each resource in the Ovt. Work field. The amount of overtime work specified does not get added to the amount of work for the task. Work always represents the total amount of work. Overtime work merely represents the portion of the total amount of work that should be considered and costed as overtime work. For instance, if a person works 10 hours, which includes 8 hours of regular work and 2 hours of overtime work, assign Work at 10 hours and overtime work at 2 hours, not work at 8 hours and overtime work at 2 hours. Project spreads the amount of overtime evenly over the span of the assignment. Try not to plan to use overtime as this is one of the few tools a project manager has to catch up on a task that's running late - overtime should be used as an emergency facility, not as part of the original plan.
You will then need to put a value into the Overtime Rate cell (usually at a higher rate than the standard of £20: say, time-and-a-half would be £30/h), otherwise overtime will be free! Remember, this is the cost to the company of the overtime work, not necessarily the cash that Fred will get.
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Material Costs
To enter material costs that are based on a unit price, assign a Per-use cost to a material resource before assigning this resource to a task. When specifying how many units to be used, Project will calculate the total material cost by multiplying the base unit price by the number or percentage of units specified.
Fixed Costs
Finally, we can see from the Costs table that we were looking at earlier in the Gantt Chart view, that there is a facility to enter Fixed Costs – this is the only place you can enter these. Let’s say that the Make Terraces task requires the purchase of old railway sleepers at a cost of £200. Then enter that figure in the Fixed Cost cell. Notice that the task Total Cost increases by that amount to £1993. If you have a summary task, Fixed Costs are not rounded up although they are added into the Total Cost field. This allows you to place a Fixed Cost on a summary task, for example, the garden designer’s fee for the project could be entered into the Fixed Cost cell for the project summary task.
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Microsoft Project: 14–Customizing Fields
Custom Fields
If you want to display specific information about your project, tailor-made to your needs,
then Project provides a variety of fields that are customizable to your requirements.
Custom fields can be inserted and displayed in any sheet view. Project‗s customizable
fields and the sort of data that can be used are:
Cost1 to Cost10 fields can contain currency data.
Date1 to Date10 fields can contain dates
Duration1 to Duration10 fields can contain duration or work values.
Finish1 to Finish10 fields can contain finish dates or other dates.
Flag1 to Flag20 fields can contain yes/no flags.
Number1 to Number20 fields can contain numeric values.
Start1 to Start10 fields can contain start dates or other dates.
Text1 to Text30 fields can contain any text.
Outline Code1 to Outline Code10 fields (introduced in Project 2002) can contain
an alphanumeric code you define to represent a hierarchical structure of tasks or
resources.
Note that if you save Interim Plans, then Project uses the Start and Finish custom
fields to store the data as shown below for Project 2000 (2002 and 2003 also allow up
to 10 Baselines) – so beware of adding your own customization to these fields.
Note also that Project has three sets of Custom fields: one for Task tables, one for
Resource tables and one for Assignment tables. Each one is unique and cannot be
read or seen in the other. Data entered in custom fields like the Text1 to Text30 or
Number1 to Number 20 fields any one cannot be seen in the other two. For example, if
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a Text1 field is created for a particular use in the Entry table in the Gantt Chart view,
details of that field cannot be seen in any Resource views or Assignment views.
Inserting a Custom Field
Setting
Create an outline project for the building of a new garden as can be seen below, or
download it in Project 98 format (19Kb) which can be read in all versions to 2003, from
this site: http://www.mousetrax.com/pub/garden14.zip .
Now let‘s suppose you wanted all the task bars assigned to Fred to show up in a
green colour.
Inserting the Column
First we need to identify tasks assigned to Fred by using a Flag field - click on the
Resource Names column heading to highlight it, then Insert/Column…
In the Column Definition dialog, you will see all the fields that can be applied to the
Gantt Chart view – whilst you are there, scroll through to see all the customizable fields
e.g. Text1 to Text30, etc. Then select the Flag1 field.