MS Project 2007 2010 Driver tool

The "Driver" tool has been added to MS Project 2007 & 2010, this tool shows you what "drives" a task, such as another task, a constraint etc
http://www.actionebiz.com/projecttraining.htm for more training

Bert Twomey
MS Office & Project Trainer

MS Project 2007, Project 2010 Training Toronto, Mississauga, Hamilton Ontario

One feature that is not clearly visible in MS Project 2007 or Project 2010 is automatic text formatting. Go to the Formatting tab of MS Project 2007 Project 2010 and on the left you will see Text styles. Click this Project button and you will be able to apply a text colour or background based on a criteria such as MS Project Summary tasks. This will help people understand the data more clearly.
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Bert Twomey
MS Project 2007/2010 trainer

Leveling in MS Project 2010

The leveling options in MS Project 2010 are more visible as they are on the ribbon but they work the same. Is it a good thing these options are right in front of the users?
Yes & no I would say:
Yes - good that they can see these tools are available
But - no you cannot just push a button and Project 2010 (or Project 2007) solve all your problems (and if it can let me know who you work as I want a job there)
Always use the Leveling Gantt to see what Project does (Project 2010 or Project 2007)
If a resource is working full time on a few tasks then the leveling tool will help BUT if the resource is working 6 hrs a day on task a and at the same time 6 hrs a days on task b if will delay task b till after task a - so the person will only work 6 hrs a day (versus 6 hrs/day on Project task a and 2 hrs/day on task b.
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http://www.actionebiz.com/projecttraining.htm

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