New highlight marker in Project 2010

While in fact there was the option to highlight certain tasks in previous versions of Microsoft Project it was buried in More Filter dialogue box. Now the button to highlight certain tasks milestones etc. is right on the View tab in the Data group - in fact it is above the filter option. I think is a good idea as many people have hundreds of tasks and they may just need to highlight some and highlighting is pretty much standard in documents so viewer (even ones who know little about project management & Gantt charts etc can see the relevant details
Bert Twomey
MS Project trainer
http://www.actionebiz.com/projecttraining.htm

New Manual Scheduled Tasks in MS Project 2010

One of the really major changes in MS Project 2010 (versus Project 2007 or Project 2003) is the manual setting for tasks. This means that a task can be inputted much the same as a task in Excel, just give it a name, no need for a duration and it is just listed. BUT what is really important to know is a successor manual task will not move when linked to a predecessor (as would happen in Project 2007 or Project 2003).
From my experience training people on Project I can see the possibility of the entire schedule being “fixed” in place by this manual scheduling. Will this be a problem for users not familiar with the new manual scheduling task option?

Resource over allocation warning in MS Project 2010

Resource management and over allocation of resources was not easy to see in MS Project 2003 and Project 2007, but now in MS Project 2010 a red icon appears when a resource is over allocated. Of course a resource can still be over allocated (I think of all those people working 20 hours a day or more). I think is a great new feature.

Bert Twomey
MS Project Trainer
Action eBiz Inc

Gantt Chart and timeline in Project 2010

While Project has always shown the Gantt chart (which is really a visually representation of the Tasks to be completed) a new view in Project 2010 is Gantt with Timeline which shows the regular Gantt chart and also a timeline on top. The timeline shows the tasks either in a line or as callouts. This timeline can also be easily saved as a graphic and used in other documents such as PDFs, PowerPoint, Word etc.

Bert Twomey
MS Project Trainer

MS Project 2010 versus MS Project 2007, Project 2003 etc

Having trained and consulted on MS Project for many years I always looked forward to the release of each new version 2003, 2000, 97 etc. as features were improved but the interface (generally) stayed much the same. With MS Project 2010 there are radical new ways of using the software, for instance you can manually schedule tasks. With manual scheduling the task is locked in a time slot versus moving with the links to other tasks (dynamic scheduling). Of course dynamic scheduling is still there but not always applied - dynamic scheduling is covered in http://www.actionebiz.com/projecttraining.htm. Also until MS Project 2010 all versions of Project used the default blue colours for Gantt bar, in Project 2010 many different colour schemes are possible