Microsoft Project For Dummies. Cynthia Snyder Dionisio

Microsoft Project For Dummies

the Project tab, in the Insert group, select Subproject.The Insert Project dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 2-9.

3 Using the navigation pane and file list, locate the file that you want to insert and click it to select it.

4 If you want to link to the other file so that any updates to it are reflected in the copy of the project you’re inserting, make sure that the Link to Project check box is selected.

5 Click the Insert button to insert the file.The inserted project appears above the task you selected when you began the insert process. You may want to choose Insert Read-Only from the Insert drop-down list if you just want people to be able to view the file, but not make any changes to it.

Snapshot of inserting a link to another project.

FIGURE 2-9: Inserting a link to another project.

The inserted project’s highest-level task appears at the level of the task you selected when you inserted the project, with all other tasks below it in outline order. If you need to, use the Outdent Task button and Indent Task button on the Formatting tab to place the inserted tasks at the appropriate level in the project.

Inserting hyperlinks

You can insert hyperlinks in a project outline, which provides a handy way to quickly open another project, another file of any type, or a web page.

To insert a hyperlink to a project document, follow these steps:

1 Right-click the cell where you want the hyperlinked task to appear.

2 Choose Link.The Insert Hyperlink dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 2-10.

3 In the Text to Display box, type the text that you want to appear for the hyperlink.Ensure that this text clearly states what information is being summarized. In this case, I’m linking the Requirements Template to a task in the project.

4 In the Link To area, click the Existing File or Web Page icon.You can link to a document of any type or to a web page.

5 In the Look In list, locate and select the file to which you want to insert a hyperlink.

6 Click the OK button.The link text is inserted, and a hyperlink symbol appears in the Indicator field. You can simply click that link symbol to open the linked file, or right-click and choose Hyperlink, then choose Open Link, or Open in New Window.

FIGURE 2-10: Linking a file.

Good organizational practice suggests that you create a folder for your project where you save your Project file, any linked files and supporting documents, such as the Charter, risk register, and other items. You can create a new folder from within the Save As dialog box by clicking the New Folder button.

Chapter 3

Becoming a Task Master

IN THIS CHAPTER

Creating summary tasks and subtasks

Moving tasks

Collapsing and expanding tasks

Creating recurring tasks

Creating milestones

Deleting tasks and making tasks inactive

Entering a task note

The foundational unit in a project schedule is the project task; everything starts with it. After you identify and document your tasks, you can work with resources, dependencies, costs, durations, and other elements.

To be an effective task master, you need to be nimble in managing your tasks: Determine how to summarize work with a summary task, move work around, start and stop work in the middle of a task, and do all kinds of other tricks that help your schedule reflect what you want to happen on your project.

Creating Summary Tasks and Subtasks

When you look at a project work breakdown structure, also known as WBS (refer to Chapter 2), or a project task list, such as the one shown in Figure 3-1, you see that it organizes tasks into levels. The upper levels are from the WBS. The lower level consists of tasks that have been decomposed from the WBS. A task that has other tasks indented below it in this outline structure is a summary task, or parent task. The tasks indented below the summary task are sometimes known as subtasks or child tasks. Summary tasks are indicated in bold in the Project outline. You can tell when a summary task has subtasks even when they are hidden because a little clear triangle is displayed to the left of the summary task. When you click the triangle with the tip of the pointer, the task expands to show the list of subtasks, and the summary task adds a black triangle to its left.

FIGURE 3-1: Summary tasks and subtasks.

In Figure 3-1 you can see that the Walls and Entry Gates summary tasks show all their subtasks. The summary tasks of Equipment, Asset Management, and Operations Readiness have hidden subtasks.

All information about a family of tasks is rolled up into its highest-level summary task. Therefore, any task with subtasks has no timing or cost information of its own: It gathers its total duration and cost from the sum of its parts.

This roll-up functionality is cumulative: The lowest-level task rolls up to its parent, which might roll up into another summary task, which rolls up (for example) into a project summary task. Any task with tasks below it gets its duration and cost information from a roll-up of its subtasks, no matter how deeply nested it may be in the hierarchy.

When you need to reorganize an outline, you can move a summary task and all its subtasks come with it, regardless of whether it’s expanded.

If a summary task is manually scheduled, the roll-up functionality doesn’t work, and Project displays warnings telling you so. The Gantt bar for the summary task has a red warning bar that shows you the calculated duration of the subtasks when they don’t match up with the summary task’s duration. The summary task’s Finish field entry also has a red, squiggly underline

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