Scheduling with MS Project (Microsoft Project) like a Pro!

1. MS Project course introduction: Welcome to the introduction to this course. So as a bit of a background, I have 20 years experience as a project manager. You have around ten years experience as a project manager coach. And I have all the current project management certifications. So this course will enable you to create and manage a schedule using MS Project, like the pros. I've worked with a row of project managers as a program manager or as a coach, or even as a project manager myself. And in this course I've only included the functions that we use. Because if you have a very complex resolve, the software trickery is bells and whistles. It will make it very hard for you to maintain. It will take you a lot of time for you to maintain, but also for others. As a project manager, you do don't work in silos, you work with others, you need to work with your team. You work with the business, and you work with peers. I mean, if you have to do a project and over because you go on holidays or because you leave the project, then in my view, it should almost be able to be shared by email. So there are three parts of this course. Introduction will give you a high-level review of MS project. More like an introduction if you like, for those of you who have never even seen it. And also an overview of all the key functionalities. So part one will provide you with a six step process to create a schedule. And so that's a schedule using best practices. Each step comes with practice activity with its answer as a video and the video format. And also has a cheat sheet, a one pager, if you like, to assist you and to really tell you what you need to do. So in part two, we'll introduce you to some more advanced component of MS Project. Some of those are actually used quite often and I will stress those and some are used less often that I just wanted to put them out there for your consideration. It works a little bit different in part two, there's only one party's activity that is on the more complex project. And that will include most of the components that we have learned in part two. And I have also a quick conclusion where I will stress that, yes, there are some other functionalities in MS Project and why it's often not a good idea to use them. So this course is for beginners who want a practical approach to learning MS project. But as it's focusing on what is really used, that will really enable you to manage a schedule like a pro. Well, thank you for taking the time to watch this short video. If you want to know more, feel free to have a look at some of the previous for this course. 2. 010 Quick MS Project introduction 1/2: This part here is for those who've never seen MS Project. I'll go through the software, I just enter a few tasks. I'll show you how it works, how the screen divided and all of this. If you've already done project management for a little while and you know this basic stuff, maybe you don't have to do it, but maybe it doesn't hurt. If I can get maybe a few minutes of your time, very quick overview for what we do and then we'll go into a more detailed view of all the functionality. 3. 010 Quick MS project Introduction 2/2: Just to give you an idea here, there's three main parts. This is the tab. Participants are two way to call it. There is a timeline part, and then there is a bottom of the screen. The bottom of the screen is split into two components. One component is like a worksheet like Excel, if you like, where you can actually input data. The second part of this screen is more visualization part is where you will actually visualize D outcome of your scheduling work. You don't need to take notes. Now, I just wanted to input a very quick project here just to show you what it looks like. Some of you might never have seen Microsoft projects, so I think that could be useful. And then I will go through the top of the screen twists, blend two of the key components. Before we get started in the six-step process. Let's say you want to go on holidays and you need to get the approval for your manager and after you need to do the bookings. So just for the preparation of the holidays, let's say you need to get approval from manager first. You estimate is going to take you around five days to do this. You just input the task and the duration. No need to take note. And as I was saying, I will go through those tips a little bit later. Then you need to decide on a destination. Maybe do some investigation. Could take you a bit longer than ten days. Those has working days, by the way. Then finally, you do the bookings, bookings activity, and then you have five days. Microsoft Project is a product that calculates milestones of a project based on the task that you would input, task duration and task dependencies. On the left-hand side here I would input the tasks. Here that would represent the tasks. More visual way. This is a calendar. So you have the date here on top. So that shows you on the, on the calendar here, where are my tasks? Then here you wouldn't put a task, ma'am, you wouldn't put the duration. This is calculated automatically. So today we are the 23rd of July. So I have these here calculated automatically and you have the predecessors. So this is where you would put your links. You would lean your task because obviously you cannot do the free at the same time. There is some type of dependency between the tasks. Then you can put the resource name. No need to see how I'm doing this, just to show you how it works. And let's say John will do this tomorrow, we will do this and then John will do this. You've noticed I've, what I've done here is I've just linked the task and I'll just allocated resource for each one of those. By linking those tasks, I have changed the way the screen looks like. This is against charts. So this is way, this is the way the Gantt chart would look like. It's a visualization of this task has been visualized here with an end date here. These task here, screw is visualized here with an end date here and then sample that one. You would have the style debt here, 20 photo to lie. You would have the end date calculated by Microsoft Project the 19th of August. That's the purpose of Microsoft Project. In a nutshell, if you like, you can put tasks, you can put durations. You input dependencies if you want to. You can also input resources. It's often useful for large projects. And then you can visualize this. They are, you'll see that there's different ways that we can visualize these assuming anyways, and so, so many components here, it's showing the resource, but you can show so many other components. And he obviously you can have more complex dependencies and, and more complex formatting as well. We look at all these, but what you've seen here is you have to start it, you have an end of the study. It is visualized here. The hand that is visualized here. If I wanted to change the amount of day, let's say I only need three days here. You just says three days here. And then it calculates automatically everything else. So that's brings my Duan of my project back to ten for focused. That's it for an overview. In the next video, we will show you the top of the screen that I've left alone. 4. 020 Step 0 Introduction: Step 0. So why do I have step 0 instead of 0? It's just for me a broad overview of the functionality of the software. Obviously not all functionality. But that shows you all the tabs and what the software looks like and sneak preview of what you could do moving forward. I know that some of you don't really want to go through this and want to go straight into the six steps. So this lecture is optional. What you could do actually is if you prefer to go into the practical stuff right away, you could maybe go for the six steps and after come back to this lecture here, and I will have an overview. But I know that some of you want to have also the bird's-eye view before going into the hands-on stuff. So this lecture is for you, and let's get started with step 0. 5. 020 Step 0 Functions part 1 Tasks Resource Report and Project: We are back to our previous demonstration project. Now let's go quickly fruit the top of the screen so there's toggled the screen. Looks very Microsoft like, doesn't it? So there is file here. Typical Microsoft. You can obviously close. You can export your Microsoft Project into PDF that I'll show you a better way to do it using the print function here. And you have all your, the typical Microsoft and more recent project as being shown here. No surprises there. Now there are two key ones that I want to spend a little bit more time than the others is a task and format. So let's go through all of them anyway. So the first one is a task. The task component focuses more on this part here of the screen. You can change your views is plenty of views. What we select is usually we keep on the gunshot which is the guarantees. This is usually the default view that we can have all these formatting so you can format your, your tasks here. Um, if you want to change the code off of the sale, the sale, if you want to link the tasks and we go through this as well. That's to Microsoft Project for me needs to be in automotive manual. Scheduled is when you weren't going to put the data yourself. But in auto mode is it'll default that we'll be using. Then all the risks we can safely ignore for the time being, maybe with the exception of information. So if you select a task and you click on information, so that will give you all more detail on the task. But you have the same outcome if you just double-click on a task like this, the booklet and you have all these and we will review some of those as we go through the steps. That's for the task component. Now resource rarely used. If you go for assigned resource, for instance, you'll see that the tourists are put together before I showing here. So that's one way to allocate resource. If you want, you can put all the resource here and after, instead of just putting them here, you can just select them using the drop-down menu. But as you've seen, I can just input the resource directly in here. I can put Robert here instead. Now, robber is automatic t part of the assign resources. And we see the three of them here. That's for the resources assigned results, actually only one that you would use. I've used the the resourcing in it past. I don't recommend it. My theories, officer, I'd like to see what I'm doing and this load of automation with this that sometimes can be a bit confusing. The report. That's another one that has never seen in news. So you can create all types of reports if you, if you want to play around with that, you can. There's one called Project. Will see that the project is not something I recommend. If you focus just on a key ones, the project information. That's something where you can put some key data about the project you can select. We'll see what the current era is, but where you can select the study as opposed to it. Good. It's a good practice to input a started here, so it will shift all the tasks after the style debt if it is started is in the future. Um, but that's not absolutely critical. The reason we will see this thing is in part two. We will see the, so that's an important one as well as when you want to put this off for everyone more or less. The rest you can safely ignore. So project information and tend to working time at other two key ones here. 6. 020 Step 0 Functions Part 2 View and Help: View. So that's another one where you can see all the views that we've seen during the tasks. So I'll be going back to the task just to show you when you clicked on task here you can see all the different types of view that you can have. And it's more or less the same information here. As you can see, you can the tasks that you are here, you can select some of the tasks. You can highlight some other task can filter by some criteria. Could be incomplete tasks will be milestone summary tasks. That's something that can be used on very large schedules. I would say. Most schedules are really don't see the advantage of this. One that is useful on this is the entire project. I like this one. You just click on this. What it does is it says smallest shows you or your gunshot using all the length of the right side of the panel. So if I go back to where it was before, just in case you missed it. If you look at this part here and type project that's spread it across metric. There is another one of note here, just another one. It's just what I mentioned here. I'm not sure if you had it if using my Microsoft Project here, but sometimes this comes as a default, so it's another view and we will have a look at it is something I quite liked. Another way to present the task. But I think at the moment we are just going through the, the beginning. So what we do is we just ignore it. If you go under the few, if you split you and you just can antique this and I will remove it altogether. Now, we can focus on really what is required for us to get started with this course. Help is a typical help stuff. 7. 020 Step 0 Functions Part 3 Format: Format is another one. Format, format, a lot of things, so yours might not look exactly quite recent version of Microsoft Project or yours. I don't know if this is part of your vision or not, but all disease has been around for ages. So you should have this. What you can do with these is you can format the text with this part here. And you can format the bars with his fat here. I'll show you, let's say you go onto textiles here and you can select the text. They're in a minute. You can select the text. Here. Let's based on the type of texts and based on where the text is located. For instance, here I have the bars and add some ticks on the right-hand side of the bow. We will see that we can put some other text on the left, on the top inside. You can go crazy if you'd like. But for the moment we only have the resource that is on the growing on the right-hand side of the bar. So if I want to just change the way this looks, I clicked the buttocks, right. And I can, just to make it very clear, what I'll do is I'll change the color, red. Magic. You can select specific areas of your screen and then change the text format. Textile. With this, there is another full format here. So Microsoft is not very generous in what you can do here was the way that the links are being done. So as you can see here, link from this starts to these task is showing like this, but you can be a bit fancy and just put it like this instead. That goes like that. If I go back to my layout, what I can do is a little party back to the wheat, whereas I can have higher bars. Just put it to 24. That, that shows you the boss and that increases these components as well. So that was textile and now we've just seen layout. This. You can ignore this plenty of cholangiogram that you can add, plenty of codons here, but you can add them this way so that doesn't scare you off. But you use lock 1% of all adults, or maybe, maybe a bit more than that. But you can do a lot for me to format the bar themselves. So there's two is two ways to do it. If you do emboss style, then you would format all types of bars. You can select. For instance, this is, this is for the moment we only have task, but when we have summary task, we can select all the different summary task. We consider it to all the milestone. But for the momentum, just take this task. And if you look at the button that tells you whether to bar color was looked like and what type of texts you can have. So we will see that in litter on there just to show you quickly. If I want to change all the tasks metric. There's also another way if I double-click on the task. If a political for those simple clip first, a simple click on this task and go to Format bar, this download Boston. Again, format, just do bar. That means I don't want to format all the bars, I will just want to format that specific ones. It gives me something quite similar. Here I can change the color. I mean, you can change all the things that you would see. You can change the pattern. You can say chance to shape, that shows you what it will look like. You can take the change to the beginning and the end. But let's keep it simple for the time being. I don't want to overload you with information that is stage. 8. 020 Step 0 Functions Part 4 Summary: Files, very Microsoft like task. This is where action happens when you can link your tasks and you can envision and the likes. Resource you can ignore report, you can ignore project is just a couple of key things. When you can put the start date of the project here. And you can assign the calendars view. You can also ignore for the time being. Then there is format. That format. It's just because I like to play around with the format of the ways you can do most of the work just with a task here. That's for a wrap-up of the screen. We've seen the top, we've seen the timeline that we have subsequently removed within a two parts of the screen, we've provided a short example here of linking tasks and how it should look like, and a bit of formatting. Now, I think we're ready to get straight into it and to go with the first tip of creating a schedule. 9. 030 Step 1 introduction: So now we are starting our six steps to build a schedule. So remember you have the PDFs at all times. And in this instance I think I have a PDF for most every, every step. So you can double check and confirm visually what, what you are learning. Also after each one of these steps, there is an assignment practice activity, and obviously it's up to you, but I know if you have access to MS. Project, even if you don't, I suggest you do those assignments that there'll be very useful for you. So the first step we are studying now is setting up the workspace. It doesn't take long. But if you just do this free for things that will save you time. So as you move forward, you'll do them automatically, bang, bang, bang, and then you can go directly to the step two. But let's review how this is done briefly. 10. 030 Step 1 Setting up : Step one, set up your working space. First thing we do is when we have this, we look if the formats are okay. So they are, You go to File options. When you start in your project, you should know if it's gonna be a long project or if you're gonna be a short project. And you go into the schedule here and you have a squeezed at these durations is entered in days. Years we took here, we went to work on two to three month project is fine. If you weren't to work on the two-week project, you might want to put ours instead. The duration, the length of the task. We leave, we leave that day. So for me it Wednesday, so I just leave it the first thing. Second thing is automation. Why would you default to manually putting it but auto, we have auto there. Then we ensure that we are the key columns visible. For some reason, you might not see them, but I've highlighted five groups, which is a task itself, which is a duration, the start and end date, predecessors, and a resource name. So those are the basic task. So if you don't see then is some, something wrong. But what you can do is you can add it here. So let's say you don't, you didn't have the resource. You go down to resource and you add it. I don't need it. I can remove this column. Height colon is like Microsoft Excel. So I have my six because this is contexts to. Finally, as we've seen before, if you have the timeline here. But let's just try not to have too much clutter on the screen. So we're going to do View tab. We take off the timeline. And voila, I have my workspace ready. Step one is done already. We are cruising. Let's go. 11. 200 assignment solution for step 1: Solution for step one assignment. First we check if the formalities, okay? We can see directly here we just input any dates it well, it gives you days. That's okay. Or if not okay. So let me remove that task. I go to File Options scheduled, and I have to move this here. Good. Dan, automation on. I go here directly. Yes, I wanted automate it. Thank you very much. Dan. Key columns visible. We have task, duration, start, finish. Pretty scissor. Resource name. If not, just a matter of clicking here and finding it. Let's say you don't have the resource name. Just go there. You find it here. You had it. Remove it, right-click. Hide. Final step. If you have a timeline, remove it. Timeline this year is going to bow the rows. We haven't seen that yet. What do we do is we go in view, we take off the timeline. Well done. Step one of the assignment is completed. 12. 050 Step 2 Introduction: Welcome back to the course. So obviously this is just following a methodology. If you have your own methodology, feel free to follow it and just focus on the MS Project component. But just to let you know, a fan at more efficient, to first list all the tasks, tried to have some key milestones that are important for your, for your team and also for management and also for yourself to keep track on and also to group the task. As we'll see, it's much easier to read a schedule that has group tasks. And also we'll see the importance of that when we have a look at dependencies. But let's get started with step two. 13. 050 Step 2 part 1 tasks: Welcome back. Let's get started with step two. We have our workspace setup now we can go straight into it. The way it works is if you see this left hand side component here as a spreadsheet table with headers there where you will be inputting the data. These will automatically so you cannot input anything on here. It's just showing you the Gantt Chart, the schedule today. Let's take an example the way it works here. We just input the task name here. So we either I5 columns that we've five or six columns if you count starting finishes as two, where you can start in putting your data. If we take, let's say an IT project, where we need to gather requirements. By default. The application takes one day with a question mark. Question mark means that needs to be confirmed, but I don't need five days. One day, sorry. I need five days. It puts the day-to-day automatically based on today's date. We don't worry about predecessors, so that's for the dependencies that we'll see later on. And then we assign a resource. So there's two ways to do this. As mentioned. One way is just to input it directly into the swamp, just new project. I'm just going to put business analyst here. The other way is we can go into the resource, we can assign resource. So I've already created several resources there. But also we can input if it's a result that is not in easily least, we can input the resource directly in it. So for instance, if the task, what do we do? We write design document. Same thing here. I will be putting ten days. Here. I will put possess nowadays, but this time I will just select it from the list. This list row what you have in your SON resource component here, and also what you have previously inputs. So there's two ways to do this, right? Design document. After just put development. Let's put five days. It's put developer, that's a new resource. Then what do we do with test desk for five days? And we put a tester here. I will be inputting a test that directly in here. Now, in our resource list is getting a bit bigger. There is a test that as well. So you can obviously put resource name as opposed to, if you know already that say you can put your own here. Now what I have is I have drawn included as well in here. I have John and I have tester here just in case it's a tester that I don't know the name yet. What do we do after the testing we just implement? And I will just say this is only one day for implementation. And who would be doing that? Well, let's say the developer will be doing this. Then we get sign-off, get sign off, and say it takes one day and it say project manager, we do that. We have put all our tasks here. I'm just going to widen this a little bit so it's all the same, the same size. So we have all our task here. Microsoft project by default has put the resource on the right-hand side here. The length of the task is being represented here. So you have the date here, which is the first day to 20 thirties here. This is the data you have here. The longest task is this one, finish the Wednesday. Thief of August. What I have input here now is being represented on this side. 14. 050 Step 2 part 2 milestones: It is a milestone, is a point in time where we task is completed. If I just go back on the top and I say project start. That would be a nice tone that the way to recreate a milestone is simply by putting 0 as duration. And we put here project closes. And Sam put 0 days. And that shows at the milestone here, what I like to do is I'd like to have a milestone that says project start. And I will hard-code here the start date of the project. The other way that we've seen was to go into the Protect here and project information. And you put here start date. You can put a start date in the future. The weather does, it is moved everything to the style did. What I don't like about this is it's not very obvious when you read a schedule because you need to go there and you say, oh, yes. Okay, that was the start of the project. What I'd like to do is to repeat the date here and Abby doesn't milestone. So anyone we'll read the schedule will know the Project star that is here. In order to do that, we need to introduce a notion of forced date. So far all the debts had been put automatically. But what you can do is you can force a dead. It's not recommended. But it is actually a good, a good, a good thing to do for just some key dates. For instance, milestones. 15. 050 Step 2 part 3 Task summaries: Let's try and group. Some of these tasks are where do we have? So we have the project starts. We had the gathering over the requirement. What I could do is I could have project execution group here. I create. For the moment, I don't put anything, they just put project execution here. Because I've noticed that all these tasks here could be part of the project implementation if you're familiar with project management. And those are tasks that fall under the project execution. If you are not familiar with this part of project management, then just sees this as a way to group some tasks. What I do is I select all these tasks here. I go back into my task tab. You see these two arrows here. So this is for the indentation, this is n, then the task. So what I wanted to do is I went and enter, there will be clicking now. All these tasks are moved to the right. And now you can see early low, a little half square here, which shows that those are sub-tasks, that it becomes a task summary. What you can do is you can hide or lease. And this is just a summary and all these tasks calendar this if we had a look at the right-hand side, what do we see is this looks different, that is above that looks different so that just the default that MS Project has for what he's attacks and Mary, just hitting me that all these tasks here for under this grouping here, we've created some task duration was created milestone, and now we know how to group tasks. If we wanted to remove it, you just do this. What we've noticed is when we've created this task summary, the duration of the task summary is equal to the, to the full length that we will take us to do all this. We have a rapid for step two already. We've created tasks. Now in step three, we will be linking them and I will make it a little bit more sense. 16. 210 assignment solution for step 2 part 1: Step two of the assignments in putting the tasks without the links or will be cheating or will be copying the tasks directly from the assignment. So we'll do a paste special here. And I just wanted to take Stata. This is not very pretty because it's still showing the duration, but that will do. We just input the duration initially five days, ten days, ten days, ten days? Yes, you can automate that, of course, two days, 0.5 days. And here one day we've done, we've listed the tasks. We've listed the duration nowadays, only one thing to do. So what did we have on the resource? Looking at the assignment sheet, supervisor will get approval from the owners. So it'll resource name will have I will input here directly supervisor. And the supervisor will get final sign-off. Supervisor will be doing this one as well. What else? Handyman one will buy the wood and nails and look. That's for man one. Then I should be able to find him or her. What he will do, it will build the fence as well. We can also drag it, drag it this way. You put it on a corner like for Excel if you want to. But what has really connect the gate to the fancy? We'll be doing this as well. And we are left with handyman two, we'll build the gate. Here. I have to write eight and demand two. That's it. There's also denote here seeing the client name is drawn to. We have a task for John. John stars gets too provide the approval. But the supervisors task is to get the approval from the homeowner. For the moment. We do not need to have a journal on these because their task is allocated to the supervisor. That's it All. We have everything as you can see here, there's no links because that's the purpose of the next step. 17. 210 assignment solution for step 2 part 2 Grouping of tasks: The last thing we can do is to group some task and see if there's some tasks that we could group together. So that will make scheduling easier and also they will make our project a bit easier to read. Let's have a look if we can group some stuff here. So there's clearly two groups here. So there's, there's a purchasing and there's a building. So that's something that we could probably groups. So let's try and do this. We just put press, Insert. We can put call that purchases. We select the free tasks. We indent them to the right. And now we have a group called purchases. We insert a task between the two there we just press Insert and we can see the beard. Now as I've, as I've instead of teachers under this one each had a similar variable is one that what we wanted to do is to learn to bring it back. Because this is not a subtask. We select those two here and we take them to the right. Something else we can do is just do them one by one. So take one week, the right, Take the other one will be to the right. Connect, get too fancy assisted part of the build. We've created our two groups in a way that makes it a bit clearer to read. And it will make the links easier when we get to these. So let's get to the links. 18. 060 Step 3 Introduction: Welcome back to the course. So for step three, just a matter of linking tasks, the guideline is we are trying to not have too many links, too many dependencies that would make your schedule very difficult to read and very difficult to maintain. So if you could try to minimize the amount of links. And also in this course, in part one, we've only showing you the finish to start. It's more or less a sequential way to have tasks if possible. So only use these types of links, believe me, but sometime we do have to use other type. So this is why in part two, I'm listing all your other tabs, a finish to finish, start to start, and rights. 19. 060 Step 3 Linking tasks: Let's get started with step three. Step three we link tasks. Now we have task standalone. There's no dependencies between them and we know the dependency, but we haven't really put it formally enter this project. There's two main ways that you can link a task. The most common way is you would select two tasks. So when they are contiguous, what you can do is just so eloquent task and drag down. You just select these two tasks, for instance. And I drag down so they both are selected and I will click on this symbol here, link the selected tasks. And that added me a link here. The other way to do it is tasks has more or less a number here. This number here on the left. This project style is task number four, gather requirements. Task number five, particular concern is summary. Task number six, what I could do is I could go directly here and I would click on this. And it gives me all the, all the, all the task. And I could say, yeah, it's gather requirements. I wanted to get to task for it. And it has it as well. You could have also inputs. Let me do this. It could have also input the number just directly here. Like all Microsoft product. If you want to select two tasks, you can also use the Control key. So I can click on this one, I click on the other one was control key on. I could also select several months and just link them all. But I won't do that this time. We have this one link. So now what we need to do is to link the project execution can only start once the requirements have initial OB leaking these two tasks. So I'll do the drag and adding them. And after, if I forget about this task, I go acidic. The sign-off needs to be linked to this project close need to beating to this. What we have here on the right-hand side, we have already. This makes it a little bit more sense. Good practice is to try and only tasks that are at the same level. So in other words, what you don't want to do is for instance, link, gather requirements with right design document because this is under this is good practice, is not always feasible. And as you can see, sometimes it to be limiting. But good practices, something always good to bear in mind. And obviously there's, there's a real-life that's sometime comes in a way that in my notes as well, if you want to have a look at the resources. What do we have done is we have linked all the task at this level here now the tasks that had been indented, I haven't linked them yet, but I can link them. So they are all, we are not doing a jar, we're doing waterfall. So they all, what I can do sequential. What I can do is I can select the four of them. Click here, and they are being linked and they put the number automatically. Something that is good to know is if you go under the View tab and you have these entire project here, you click here. And what it does is it puts the gunshot or visible older Oregon char task or visible. What have we done? We've linked everything. So this one is linked to this using the symbol. The business analyst gathering requirement is linked to these tasks here. All these tasks under the task and Maria been linked. So you'll notice that the project execution summary task as extended, it used to be ten days. Now it's 21 days because all the task of being sequentially so it takes longer. Then we have good sign off and we have the project closes day as a milestone. Let's pretty much eat. So that's how we link tasks that we already have done a project Morales. If you've done this, let's take the next step. 20. 250 assignment solution for step 3 Linking tasks: Do the step three assignment solution. We have more information on the dependencies so the owner can be contacted two days from today. What you could do is you could've had a task that is two days long way. And you have the duration for two days. And then you have a milestone and you say owner is back these milestones or 0 days, and you link those two. And here you go. What you could have done also is just owner his back without that task here and just hard-code the date in two days. But I think that's that's okay because this is today's stage for two days. I think I prefer this way, which you can do is add the resource name, John. And here he is. Nowhere can start until the approval is provided. Of course, what we do is we link the owner is backwards getting the approval. Once the winner is bad, five days for the approval, n will link the purchases. Wheeze approval. Obviously, we cannot start the build until the purchase or complete. We try, as we said, we try and link only the summary tasks to start with. A high-level, you have the approval, purchases build, and after you have the sign-off, after the build, you have the sign-off selected to link them. You go to your view entire project. You have a sanity check here. How does it look? It looks okay. What I would add though is a project clause here. Project clauses as a zero-day task, which is a milestone. And I will link the two. They would look nice and neat and you would have a completion date. Now we've done the summary task. Now let's have a look at the individual task under. Here we have by wooed nails and look, but the instruction send me that they can be performed concurrently, so I just leave them this way. What we have is if there can be done concurrently, that there's an assumption that you shouldn't take longer than ten days. I mean, you would think that he or she would buy all the things at the same time. So this is where you have these red people by the way, that they think that these resources is being given too much work. So we just ignore these bird for the BOD of a couple of things here. The first good can be completed in Tampa needs to be connected to the fence only after the fanciest completed. The connection can only be done when the faintest completed. So what I do is I'll link those two tasks. That's the same for the gate. The gate and the kinetic get to the fence, link them as well. So I've linked this task and that task to the completion here. And the reason is that to complete that task you need, you have two dependencies here. These two tests need to be completed initially showing here we start at ten and then even. And we knew about that. So we know that the when the build is completed and you get final sign-off. Here we go. We have everything here in order and we do a sanity check. It all looks good. Tuck, tuck, tuck. And that means that the step three is now completed. 21. 070 Step 4 Introduction: Welcome back to the course. So in step four we add constraints. What are constraints? My definition of constraints is an issue that we know we're going to have for the project. And there's nothing we can do about it. It's more or less something we have to live with for the duration of the project. So a constraint doesn't always impact the scheduled. But I think it's important to have this step to see if we can really put this constraint in the schedule to make everybody aware, yes, we are doing this, but we have this constraint. For instance, you could have a resource and available for the next few weeks, for instance, or until a certain point in time. That's something you can put in your schedule. So you could have a resource that is allocated 100%, but you know that he's not always working on these. So it would be better to put that constraint and only put up, say, 75% of the time. But there are other constraints obviously that you cannot just pull on the schedule. So this one obviously, you can put them aside. So until now, what we have done is we have a very theoretical schedule. Everything works to perfection and in a constraint it's our opportunity to really put some real life factors into it. Like for instance, you could have also scenario could have also is, you know, Today's for an approval to go from execution to implementation of a project, for instance. But this is where you put that, that, that's not really the case in real life. It takes two weeks usually to get someone could tell you yes, for my experience to take two weeks here to get approval. So you wouldn't even need to put this in a, in a scheduled as a constraint and you would add two weeks between the, between the two tasks. So do your best when you are the project, tried to identify all the constraints and if they translate to the schedule, put them here. So this will make everybody aware that yes, we know we have scheduled and it's something we have to live with. But you have been warned more or less. Let's get this done. 22. 070 Step 4 Constraints: Welcome to step four. Let us sit constraints. Set constraint is an optional part. I've included in the resources my other course that I have on async project management of included the steps to put a schedule together. And towards the end, I have a step which is set constraints. What you do is you, you've done your schedule in an ideal world, this is what your schedule would look like. But at the end you have to think, do I have any constraints? In part to review some bit more complex way to add a constraint with different types of linking that we can have and changing the time of the Christmas shutdown period or the right slit. Let assume that here I have only one constraint. The test data here is not available until, let's say the 15th of September. You look at your schedule, you see the tester here turn. It has to start the 11th of September. So that's a constraint. What I'll do is I will insert a task here, dusk here, because that's the way I like to do it. I would put it puts John back from leave. And I will put here He's back. 1540 September. We had complained here. It asked me to keep the constraints that task we can start tell you, yes, this is what I wanted to do as we've seen before. I've hard-coded date. So it's saying here, yes, this is hardcoded, this is the date that you have to HER2. But at the moment it doesn't really make sense because it's, let's put it to 0 as a milestone because it's standard on dead. But what I want to do is to link John's work to that, to the daily. I will be linking them. Now. There is a delay. Now we have the looper here. And then we have a bit of a gap where nothing happens because we are waiting for the tester. Then when Johnny's back, then he can do the testing. Now what you can see is the jaws task has two predecessors. It has the predecessor of obviously it needs to have the development completed before, before we can start his work. And also it needs to be back from leave. That's that's the way I prefer to do it because when you read this, it's clear. What I could've done also just directly put here into the test task. Bang, change this. The dead here, but here, I prefer it at it very clear. That's it. So in part two, we can review different constraints that we can face. But just a quick note here. On the task. If you double-click on a task, you see some information here. It's more or less all that haven't put it, put it in a different way. So that's the name of the task. The rest of the predecessors are showing here. The resources names are here, if any advanced. So that's the starting value of that's because I've hard-coded the date. So that's some notes that you can put not on the task. And that's customFilter if you want to be crazy about it. When I have put a little note which is not on a task, that's just one way to, to, to educate area of the ways you select the task and good information, as I was mentioning in the overview. Let's go to the next step which is actually updating the schedule. 23. 260 assignment solution for step 4 constraints: Continuous tip for the first one is a sign-off is required to start the work that's already taken care of. So we can say, well, we have this constraint with that already managed by our scheduled, by our project here. If we don't have the sign-off here, then we will not continue. Handyman two can only start six days after handyman one. So they are all those ways to do this, but I'm just going to show you a very simple and visual way using only what we have learned. When demand two is here. Let's just highlight the elemental so it will be clear. What do we do is we create new tasks, is not available, not available. And then to back, that's a mudstone, not available for six days and then a milestone. Okay, so what do we do is we've seen that those tasks are not dependent. So it's already under the Build. We have a task and you meant to load available for sees days within that to the milestone. Meant to his bag and then willing the anti-matter into task. The way to just highlight all that a little bit more visible, those, those data a bit different color because it's something that has just been impacted we have been doing. So that's where you gonna go away. The way it shows here is Andy mentor who is a way. There's a link to a milestone here. And then T2 can start the work. Just to show you a very simple constraint that we could have in a project. That finishes step four. And next we'll update the project. In this assignment. 24. 080 Step 5 intro: Welcome back to the course. Now, let's imagine we've been running this project for a few weeks and we need to update it. And let's have a look at how this can be done in MS Project. 25. 080 Step 5 Updating the Schedule: Welcome back to the course, step five, updating the project. For the moment we've just input a task, we blink them. It all works perfectly. But let's say that the project is now in execution. We just would like to provide an update or where we had with the project and see if we are on track or not. If you don't have them. Could you add two columns? The first one is core, percentage complete. You go into these colon there, you press on this and you just add the colon this way. And the other one is called remaining duration. Remaining duration. Here gather requirements. It's if the duration was five days, percent is completely 0 per cent, therefore the remaining duration is five dates. Me change the format of these so we can see it all on here. Pleasing date of the project is 23rd of September here. Bear that in mind. The project, let's say the project start is completed. So I'll just put 100% here. It gives me a big tick of approval here says yes, this is completed together requirements at the business analyst tell me it's 100% completed yet, no problem. And here, business or estates me, it's only 50 per cent. So what it does is it gives you a big tick over the one that's entered percent completed, the ones that are only partially completed. We'll just keep you this line just halfway through or to delete all of completion of the task. Here's 100% of this aligned inside. It shows you the progress. So it shows you it's all done. This is showing you only 50%. Normally, as you would know, we cannot do it now because we are, we have put some deaths in the future for, for training purpose. But usually you would have vertical line here showing on the day of today, today's date. Let's imagine we are the 24th of August. The software would have a line here. And I will tell you, based on this, this is where you should have been with. This is where these lines should have been on today's date. So you should have completed up until that point, but now he's beyond that point. So that means we would be early in that scenario. What it does, it updates automatically the remaining duration. That's why I wanted to show you this colon as well. When you put 100 here, remaining duration is 0. So that's the first way to update a project. But what you've noticed is, let's say if I go back here and I see this is only 0% and this is 20%. It still shows you the 23rd of September here. Even though you could argue I'm very late, there's only having hardly started the 25th of September. So what you can do instead is instead of updating the percentage completed, you update the remaining duration. Disease, it would, it would impact that data here because everything at the beginning of this project has been calculated and we'd put it back to 0 if you like. So you can see everything has been calculated based on the starting date of the 14th of August. If I say well, instead of gathering requirements, had noticed that it would take longer, so I put ten days here. What it does is changed your UN did. It seems good. It seems accurate. But when your project manager working on the project and what you don't want to do is to have the end date of the project changing on a daily basis based on based on your date of the guise of the team. This is why I don't recommend changing the S1 on the on a daily basis, go with a percentage because he would keep the state constant here. If you were in a situation where really a task becomes late, you will need sorry to raise a change request. You would need to say, my project is going to be late. But don't do that on a daily basis. So what I will do is I would just leave this one as it is. And I will I will just update the component here back to normal and just update the percentage complete. And when I really see there is something going wrong, then I will update the remaining duration. That's how we did projects. And now we have done that. There's only one thing to do is just to publish your project, to show it, to present it at the next step. It's quite important in a way that's going to be your PR you, if you've done all of these works, then you need to present it in a very professional way. So let's have a look at this. 26. 280 assignment solution for step 5 Update the Schedule: Assignment step five, It's update the project. First thing to do, we know that two of the project we have two ways, percentage completion or duration. It looks like at the moment they only completed tasks or 50% completion given the percentage. So we can just add the column percentage complete if you don't already have it. Several weeks after two weeks, the approval has been given. What does that mean? That means is d1 away is completed, the owner is back is completed, and the approval is completed. Those three tasks are completed. Materials purchased, good work, 101%, 101%, 100%. You can swim you this. By the way, the message that you see when it has me, there's a faster way to do it to against it. I can select them all and do them all at once, but I adjust for these training. I just wanted to do them one by one so it's clearer. Defense is 50% completed. The fence is this task here, which is market at 50 per cent. Good work. That's a very quick overview of a dating task based on your assignment. What you've noticed is the build that has been recalculated at 32%. That means that these two build overall these 42% completed. When you report back to management, instead of giving the completion of all these human want to say, well, purchase is finished and the build is thirty-two percent completed, then that's enough. Information from them. 27. 090 Step 6 Introduction: Welcome back to the final step, step six as two components. The first one is to format the schedule and the second one is just to print it. I mean, we don't print more these days. It's more to export it to a PDF that we'll be using. Bear in mind that not a lot of users would have MS project in your company. So you will need to most of the time putting in PDF format to send it across the formatting as we've seen in, in the beginning of this, of this course, I, we're seeing that a scheduled for me needs to be easy to share and easy to maintain. So this is why I like to spend maybe a little bit more time at the beginning when I create my schedule to make it clear and easy to understand. So when I update it, it's faster. When someone wants an update. I can show her very quickly where it is and when I send it across people and understanding faster. It's also good for your time management or the words people come, come back to you and ask you questions all the time. But if you're not into this, there's no right or wrong. Just, you can skip all the formatting path and just look at a pdf and you're down more or less. Okay, so let's do this. And after we move on to part two. 28. 090 Step 6 Part 1 Format tasks: Welcome back to the course, step six. Let's try and make it look pretty. I mean, it's, it's very personal. Some of us like colors, some more slide to present things a certain way until my more concerned about the end result, the delivery date, I'll just gonna give some suggestions. So we've already talked about grouping task logically, which is a good starting point. Removing unnecessary columns that you have to think about your endogenous all the time is, is my audience interested in knowing that John is doing these tasks? If it's for management, probably not, they're probably not interested in. But if it's for a team lead meetings they did, they would want to know who's doing the task. So that depends on the audience. Avoid technical jargon here. I mean, try and have the task that had a simpler name. If it's for your management team. Something that everyone can understand. What you can do is now we've talked about, if we talk about marketing is you can insert blanks. So you just, you just position yourself on the sale and you just press Insert, knot, insert task. If you went to insert a task, you right-click on here and insert task. The hugest, you just press insert on its own. Obviously, this is a very short example, but for bigger projects that might make it more visible. The chlorine is something very, very personal, but what I like to do is, and this is an opportunity for us to review. The format. Component is what we can do is we can format some groups of tasks with the same color friend tell us something I like to do that it's not often seen or done, but I like to do it myself. Will enter your us to the formatting here. So what I would do, for instance, is I'll go there and I put all these tasks. The president task here. That's a typical coloring stuff is suppose here I would put a darker color for this one. Let's see. Dark, this one. Instance, one. And all the task under the same, the same color, that pillar. This way. And then doors back to these, for instance. I like to do this because for me, when you're looking at a schedule that is 34 pages long. And several times a day, I can go straight to where I want and I've heard good feedback as well. So that's a type of things you can do. So that was using the task shading and coloring here. Now if we go back to the format here, you can format the textiles. Textiles, the way it works is when the gears, depending on which item that you have. So it could be a critical task, non-critical task milestone. You can have milestone on a specific color. For instance, you can have the milestone put in red. What he does, He's just highlights all the milestones. It's a formatting that is specific for a group of task. But obviously you can sing it out and do your own formatting as we've just seen. The interesting thing is also, you can format the bath takes on the bar. Say for instance, here on the right-hand side we have the resource name. So if we go back to the dark text on the right, which is the resource name, let's say you don't want to have it in board, you just wanted to have it in there? And I put it all in his military. That's for the textile. So you can, you can play around with this. 29. 100 Step 6 Part 2 Format bars: Something else that we can do is format bar on the right-hand side here. There's two ways to do it. So you can either double-click on the buy till. So that will change the bar only dad bar. Or you can just select the line and put format bar that we also only format by itself. But you can also do a format bass tiles. So that would format or the bars with exception obviously over the one that you've already formatted, and that will be overwritten. But if we go to the bass styles for my bar styled, it gives you the tasks. For instance, here gives you the milestones, the summary, and you can format in each one individually. The task for instance, let's say I don't want to see these, these blue here. I went instead to see it in Scholar. I want also. That was for the coloring. You can trace the beginning of the bar, the end of the bar. You can change the text to at the moment we have the resource name on the right-hand side. I don't really like it. What I wanted to see is just the finish time. So you just select your, you can select your field. Finish. On the left. I wanted to name all the task. If you're not sure but which feel limited, go through them, the query rural them. There's a lot of information. I think the name is quite an intuitive. When I press Okay, now what he does, He's done change the color of the bars. If put named task on the left-hand side. So if you don't like this format, if it's too bored and you can go back to the textile this time and change it. That's something you can do as well. So there's a lot of formatting that is available for you to have a look at. What I found is sometimes when you make this Gantt chart readable enough, you do not even need this part for literally go to a steering committee or meeting with management. And they don't want to see all these as long as there's the date and the key tasks and that's all they interested in. This way, I think that looks good. You don't even need to show them the spot here. That's what we'll see now actually, how do we present this? How do we export that? 30. 100 Step 6 Part 3 Export Schedule: The half my schedule here. I can go into file and I can export it to a PDF because we think the thing is with MS Project is not a lot of people have it in, you're in a company. If you send an MS project like this, you're going to have plenty of MS back, say sorry, I can't read your stuff. You would export it in a PDF here, but a perimeter is easy to sunlit. You format merge sort. The luck of the draw if you write, what I prefer to do is to do a print. You print it as PDF. So you have choice here and you just print a PDF because they'll let you at least that shows you what your what your printout would look like. Print and they'll give you some option presented projects you have, the date, shows you how many pages you want to print, the orientation. This there's nothing really useful in here. You go to Page Setup Oliver. What you can do is you can say, I want it on the unwind pitch. For a small project. That's something that can be given. You can do the stuff, obviously. You can change it in portrait, you can change the margins, the headers, the footer, the footer. We'll give you all of these by default. But one of the first thing I do when I print these are just remove it all the time. Because who you wanted to know so much detail? I mean, we all know what this word means on religion here. He's got a thing on his own and you say the agent on non, he removes it. Be mindful of what he's showing here so you can play around with the formatting and you just remove some colognes or the Reich's. That's something that I'm It's tray on narrow and you'll try things, try and stretch and add a little bit. So play around with these and go into the print and see what it looks like and I think you're good to go. So we'll see in your assignment, we'll see some other ways. Obviously, it's, we're seeing it's something very personal to you. You happy with the default. You don't need to do anything really. If you're happy with all the formatting, then don't change anything. But I'll show you a couple of examples in your assignment. 31. 290 assignment solution for step 6 Format and Print or save: Welcome to the last step of our assignments, step six of our assignment of part one, we have a few things to do. We have to change the format and print a PDF. So the first thing that the assignment is asking me is change all the tasks and task summaries to finish date on the right instead of the resources. This is a task, this is a task summary. And we need to change what's on the right-hand side. As it's for all. We go to Format. We go to bar style format and Boston, which means you do it for all the bath. We search for task initially. So the first one is task. And on we go to the text. On the right-hand side. Yes, indeed, we have a resource names. Instead, they want the finish date, so we just press Finish. I should change it for all the tasks. Now all the tasks of the finish date. They also asking that for task summary format, bar style, which is summary here. Same thing, text on the right finish bank. So now we see also on task summaries, we have a date that's for the first bullet, 0.2 bullet point sure. Resource name on the left of our tasks. We have to go back there. Format, bar styles. We go back to the tasks. We go on the text. And on the left, we wanted to resource name. The resource name. If you want to remember the name of the column, just go on top here. Yes, that should be called resource name. Name. Now we have all these. I'm not saying this is the best way to put the things, but at least we have some late. What I will do instead is I would put maybe the task names. So that's something else that you could do instead, but that was the assignment. Are we stick to this? So we've done the first two bullet points. Next bullet point change or milestone tasks, left-hand side to read. So that's a nice side here. So we know formatting balance anymore, we just formatting these components here. What do we can do is we go on textiles here. I tend to change. We put milestone tasks, then rate. Then we press Okay. Then all the tasks that are milestones have been put to read here. They say to form, format some tasks to your liking. What we could do, let me know that's, that's sufficient, but just a reminder, I suppose you can go here, you can change it to the way you want it. You go, you can put in here, what you can do is you can use the format printer, printer, sorry, format here, you do the same here. We have the project closes here. So that's something also we might want to put it this way, so we will use the same here AND gate approval here. All right. So I think that just put it in board to be consistent. Want to have a project start here, for instance, external debt here, 0 and then you put descend, you select this line Format Painter, and you go back here. And then it should be okay. Next, we print that to PDFs. We go, These were silly. You avoid explored because you have less control on the format. So if we go to print instead, this doesn't look too bad. So we have the project start, we have the project close. We have everything showing. We have all the dates. That looks pretty good. I'm still not a big fan of these, but you know, maybe I could leave it this standard for, for the exercise. Look feet to one-page legend that this appears that even pyrene a go. So what we have here now is something reading to move to a PDF. So if we say print PDF, that would ask you where do you want to log it? And that will be probably the name as well. And then we're good to go. So that was the last step of the assignment for the part one. Now we're moving into the advanced part. 32. 299 Part 2 Introduction: So let's have a look at part two now. So I'll be lying if I told you that I never used any of the functionalities of part to some of them are quite useful. Just to name a few. I think that the timeline, as you know, highlight formatting. So that's something I will be using and the resourcing as well. It's rare that you have a project with task only when there's only one person allocated to each task. And obviously the calendar, there are some holidays for the company Y that you will need to use. So part two works a little bit differently about to introduce the functionality first, all sequentially in a row. And then at the end we have this final assignment where I'll give you a schedule that is a little bit more complex, which is an IT software development project, simplified. But where you can apply some of the components are that you've learned. So let's get started with part two. 33. 300 Advanced Dependencies: Welcome to the first demonstration of the advanced, quote unquote component of Microsoft Project. So for in part one, we've seen the linking of tasks. The default linking of task is from start to finish. Now we will be learning other types when we link these two tasks. Here we go, Here we go there. When we linked these two tasks. By default. The second tasks starts when the first one finished. So that's why we call it start to finish. And there is no just bear that in mind that here That's just showing a five. Another way to have a look at this is you double-click on the task. You go into the predecessor and what it gives you is the task ID here that is linked to this task, to task one and finish to start. Now there are several other ways that we can link tasks. Free to be exact. Let's look at them one by one. The first one is finish to finish. In order to demo that, I just going to change my example, I'm going to remove the predecessor. Let's go back to tasks here. We have two task one or five days when three days, five days, three days. Standard link go here, one after the other. We've seen this one. The second one is from finish to finish. How do we do that? We have two ways. We're going to double-click on here and here we put okay, I want to link to the task five. Task five. And when we click on these, we can have a look at other types. So either the oral, these two we select finish to finish, press. Okay. Now we just wanted to have the two tasks to finish at the same time. Therefore, this one will know start, we'll wait for two days. And after we'll start and finish to finish. There is another way that I mentioned, so let's remove that back to where it was before. Is you just directly, if you know the acronym five FF five is if you just put five, it's normal one. And if you want to have finish-to-finish bank, let's have a look at another way. We, the other way to link it is from start to start. We want to make sure that those two task start at the same time. I think this is quite convenient when you have concurrent task, that's a one probably I would use the most and list all those tasks under the task summary and it goes out automatically as we've seen. But still you have three or four tasks. You want them all to start at the same time. For instance, you could have here development. Here we have development support. You would want those two tasks to start at the same time. You don't want to, the development has started and after the support to start three days after all the rocks. Usually you would have the same duration as well. Same here you can go here and put five essays. If you like. Let's have a look at the last way to link. In order to review the last dependency type, I'm just going to give a different type of example because I think it's required for this type of linking. Let's say you have a date that you cannot change. For instance, let's say you have a product demonstration for five days and you will set up the meeting with a client and an x. That's really set in stone. It cannot change. But you have some dependency to these task. For instance, you have to make sure that URL components are ready, but you're not really sure how long it would take. So we have here, for instance, we have five days. So the way you would link those two tasks is you would put the task here. You could take the task from here as well. You would select here that start to finish. This is the task that cannot change in here. So therefore here there is a dependency that needs these needs to be finished. Absolutely needs to be finished before these tests start. What do we, it works you to work backwards in a way. So let's say you've realized that to review all these components, you don't need five, but you need ten days now. You put ten days now, what do you do this it didn't move this one, but this one all the way back here. In other words, when you have a, you would use it when you have something, data cannot change or a demonstration with a client or anything and we cannot change. So you have all these also on your PDF resources, give you a brief summary of all this. 34. 300 Advanced Lags: Next component we can have a look at and it's still more or less related with dependencies is log. So we can wait for a few days for the task to start. The way it works is putting back to the example before we have two tasks here. Start to finish, or this one will start only when this one is finished. But let's say you want to wear it when you want to wait for the desk to set her. Once this task is completed, you want to wait a few days for the other one to start. What you do is you double-click on this. And here there is a colon that you might have noticed before. So you can select either use this or just put the number directly. But here we put two days. You want to start Task six after task five when it's completed. But you want to wait today's and when you press okay. It shows you the two days day. So it doesn't start right away with for two days. Now it works also with a negative. If you put minus free days, for instance, starts three days before the, before the end. 35. 320 Advanced Resource Allocation: Let's review how to change their resource allocation to a task. So I would say within the Advanced, that's something that you would probably use the most. It's very rare that you have only aerosol fully dedicated and only one resource working on a task. So it's something that who's probably be useful. If we take this example when building a fence again, sorry guys, but we buy the material. We build a fence and then we build a gate. What I've done here of I have those three tasks linked. Just finish to start normal. As before, the handyman one buying the material and meeting the fence and the handyman too, a building to gate. Let's say we wanted to change that and we have a colon here. Well, sorry guys. And demand one is only available 50% of the time. The way to do this is we double-click on a task. Again. This also the task information as we've seen, but double-click itself, it's faster probably. We go the stem on the resource part. We have any man one assignment or no, We don't care. You need 100%. Say, Well, he's only working 50 per cent from, from these dead, from the 444. Good to say. What do we do? We just simply put 50% here. Press Okay. It's going to send me his usual reminder here. The duration as doubled because he only works 50 per cent. The effort was four days. If he works on your 50% of the time, then a duration extends. You can also type it directly in here that he says is strange symbols and anoxia might take you longer so that the easiest way is to double-click on these units. Let's say you say back to 70% peak, okay? And adjust the duration automatically. Let's say handyman to, we stuck to do these tasks here, can come early and help to buy the material. We have handyman one working this. We double-click on this. We have a look at resource handyman to hear and demand two we added here as well. So we have two resources are 100% and what it does is increase the amount of work, reduce the duration. We reduce the duration. We could have done the total told you all the way or just increase the amount of work. But in fact, this is not what we wanted. We put two guys on these, so one can go in by one type of material, you're, the guy can buy something else. And therefore the overall duration will be faster. When we look here we have the two results are showing here. As always, we can know just simply click here and just had another resource on it. When playing, playing around with resources like these and percentage, you have to be very careful to serve your schedule beforehand. Because I can very easily miss mess up your your end dates and rocks and you can get a little bit lost. As I was saying, I don't like to have my milestones in my project that's changing on a daily basis. It's very difficult to manage. I'd rather have a good look every week. All the experts, you don't went to your end. It's to change every time you go and update. So be very mindful with this. And this is where in a way it's good to have generic role instead of names sometimes where you can leave them for the photo life of the project. That's it for the resourcing and changing some components. 36. 330 Advanced Calendars: Another function that is quite good with MS Project is you can put time off. You can put them off for the resources are for everyone working on the project. And this is typical for the Christmas spirit or depending on where you work, it usually they usually we call for the two weeks, so forth. There's Gordon mentioned down to their likes. What you do is you go into your project tab, you go into Tange working time. And then you can see you can already some calendars. It could be 24 hours a night shift or even calendar to resources. But what you usually do is to use the standard one and you make the change in there. You can also create your new Canada. If you're keen. Then you specify which these are off here as an exception. So what I would do is I would go in here. I will call it, for instance, decrease Mish shut down. I would say this would be the Christmas, the week before Christmas or the week of Christmas. We would start at 21st and it will finish the 27th. Then I would press Okay, and I would put that time off. But as an example here, Let's put the federal August as well because this is where I am here. So let's see how it impacts my schedule. Would go here. I would say the biggest greatest ease off. Let's say two, it takes it automatically appraise, okay. And bank. What he's done is it has added one gray area here. The Monday is put it as off. Then he has moved everything by one day. So now the definition is relevant for Bogost. I think that this is pretty good. And this is actually quite often used with moderation and you didn't want to start doing that every time someone goes on holidays, you instead you would put the holiday of the guy here. So it's very visible for everyone. But for Christmas or sometimes depending on where you were, I think this is quite useful. 37. 340 Advanced Timelines: Let's have a look at timelines. I really like timeless. I think it's a good way to present the heavy project into something a little bit simpler. So I really like this one and I've noticed it's not often use. And fortunately for this project here, this is still a relatively small projects, so we might not be very obvious, but we'll have a look as part of the exercise of the assignment for part two, bigger project. And we see how useful it can be. Just a matter to, I think a finite useful to present maybe to management, to present a steering committees and the likes. That makes you look more professional instead of just dumping these to everyone and you have to work out what it is. You go into view what we removed at the beginning. I know now I'm asking you to put it back. You got a few we had a timeline. I think the best way to demonstrate its to properly show an example. So let's say we can drag things so we take a task the easiest way. There's other ways by their users where you take the task and you drag it here. You see the plus minutes, good to go. What else get approval? Let's say I'll drag this quite fern. You put it there. Put it there. So what it does is, is more or less shows the key tasks here in a different topic, more in a timeline view, when a, when a group hotels is completely put a tick here. So that looks good. Teak here and this one is obviously not complete it. So he just showing the point where it stopped here, it gives you the high-level milestones because I've put them, you can put milestones as well. You can be more granular if you like. You can, for instance, drug this one here. So you just put it under. This one might be more explicit. And then you put the gate here. Here's the gate and the light. You can play around with these, you can change obviously the way you click on that, you click on the timeline and you click on the Format. And then you can have, for instance, you can change some components here. For instance, you can put three lines instead. That allows you to have more line here. You can put a bar level, which is putting your labor for each one of the timeline, because you can have several timelines as well on very large project, I found it very useful when you have two large phase and they will build up a little bit too. You would have two timelines. You can obviously change the color, heal things. You can, for instance, put this one in, in that color here. What else can you do? You can change the date format. If you want to go crazy. Let's bend to your things you can do. And then when you print, when you select it, you select it. And after you press on print and he just show you the timeline and you can only bring that. Obviously, you need to do some work to make it look prettier than this butter. As opposed to when you click here, you go File. You go print. And then I will show you the trustees will print you this. You can choose which component you print more or less. And that's it for the timeline view. 38. 360 Advanced Resource Levelling: Let's review quickly the resource leveling. So resource liberty, it's Microsoft Project functionality that prevents one resource to be over allocated. When Resource be over-allocated if being used at more than 100%. For instance, if we take an example here that we had these three tasks here, by wooed, by narrowed, by log. We had these red man hears english research over allocated. But we ignore that because we thought, well, the result is going to buy the free at the same time. So ten days to do all these is more than enough. But imagine a scenario where the handyman comes back to us and say no, no, I need ten days for each. There are different stores, they are waiting time, so I need ten days duration for for each one of those. Therefore, I cannot be our overall located. What you do is you either put the manual sequencing to avoid the red and you go to task and you link them. Therefore, the one after the other, after the other. If only if the result is and exactly do it in any sequence, it doesn't matter because you have 30 days now to do this. But that's something we've already done. But instead you can let MS. Predicted to eat automatically for you. So you go here and you can either live or the resource itself for your project. Let's say we want a literal your project. We don't want any red person today. Or you press here. Note that there is no Actually dependencies here, but what Microsoft Project has done is ensure that this resource is not overallocated. So when that resource was overall located, MS Project moved one of the Rousseau's tasks to the right to ensure that there is no more than 100, 100%. Microsoft Project didn't do, I didn't do the link. So there's no link there. Didn't link those task, but it just put them one after the other to prevent the over application here. Another example, I don't know if you recall. There was handyman one building the fence and there was handyman to building the gate. Let's say we have a colon and the men to smooth down, not available anymore. So we thought, well, we are going to give it all to handyman one. Handyman who are now we have the red men are back. Andy man when he supposed to build a fence and at the same time the gate. So fair enough. What you can do, you can manually sequence the task or you can leave it to MS. Project and say, I want to leave a lead or again, then bingo. So what MS Project does is select this task at the bottom, moves eat to remove the over allocation here and there's no more red man, and then move the task. It's not a bad system. I mean, once again, the challenge is it's not really visual. You cannot really see is someone could look at it and say, well, what happened there? Till you hand over the project to someone who has looked at what happened there. I just don't understand what always because we didn't resource leveling and is moved mostly everything. So that's a first challenge is decentralized show on here and definitely not on here. The second tenant is when you have a scheduler that is across four or five pages, sometimes you have the need to over-allocate, quote, unquote resource. You know that this resource needs to do a little bit of work here, a little bit of work there. And you want to keep it this way without changing the schedule because you know that the resource has a capacity, they can do it, but you just needed to help to have, to have these to make sure that they remember to do the task. If you start resource leveling these, for instance, that would mess up your schedule. That would move everything to the right when it doesn't really need to be to be used with caution. I would say always Becker before you play with resource leveling as well. 39. 400 Assignment for part 2 Introduction : Welcome to the assignment part of part two. So the project that I have here is a bit more lines, a bit, a little bit more complicated. It, IT, software development simplified. Obviously. It software, the Workman can become quite complex and sometime it's a jar, but this is just waterfall. Just wanted to give you an example where you could put to practice some of the components you've learned in pow2. So don't get intimidated if you've never done IT software development or the likes. It's not really important. As long as you follow the assignment instructions. For each one, it doesn't really matter what the project is about at the end of the day. So I have an MS Project for you available to use. This is although this is the latest version, let me know if you have problems with compatibilities, but in theory you shouldn't. I have also a PDF version of the project. So if you don't have access to MS project yet, you can still practice in evolutionary it. Okay, let's get started. 40. 400 Assignment Solution part 2 a: Get started with part two assignments solution. The first bullet point we had is add a business scenario is allocated to 20% during the development or supported developer. The developer has any questions. This is the development phase. Would need to do is to add a task which would be devoted developer, Let's say support. There will be for the duration of this task which is 80 days. We put the business analyst, business analyst cooled, just do this symbol here directly without just going to double-click to put a 20% manually. You go. He's asked me to use your equation. Where do you want me to do that? What we want to do is to keep the duration the same. Keep the duration the same. Because obviously the business and that he's being in there doesn't make the task. And the longer you just being there like a team lead as a support for all these tasks. First bullet point down, gonna unchanged load testing tool. These are the symptoms that service cybersecurity. What they want us to do is you have these two tasks finishing at the same time. We just go to the second task, which is the load testing, and we just do it. I'm just gonna do it directly the stamp. I'm just gonna put 30 ff, which is finish to finish. When we zoom in, when we zoom, we see those two tasks now finish at the same time. The low tester can start a bit later, but the additional be finishing at the same time, so there's a bit of overlap, therefore, the two tasks, second bullet point is done. Third bullet point delay the task implementation in production by two days, two to four sign-off. Implementation in production is showing here. Task 34. What he wants me to do is to delay, will delay the implementation here. I would add lag in predecessor. I would add like how many days, two days. Now it's showing here. This is, this would be done after all that task summaries done. And it will have today's in the end. I just took, instead of taking that task, I just took the summary task here. Next bullet point, changes scheduled to reflect the Nobody's working on the 4th of July. So that will depend on your dates on yours, but I will be putting the data online. So where do we go? We go to Project, we go to change working time. And the forefoot writer has gone for me, so I just have to go to the next year, July the 4th of July. So the forward lie was a Sunday, but if it's too fuzzy and a 21 inches, we just went five to be off the observed days. So Fourth of July. We go here and he's giving me the thief of July so that they will be off and that will be reflected, is pushed everything to the right. Another one doesn't change the location to always located at the post-implementation review to only 20 per cent. Look. Post-implementation review. It's after the implementation, it see it's five days duration. There is a conflict here because the business analyst is, for instance, and I think the developers world, so they are working on these full-time for five days, which is obviously a mistake, so that needed to be changed. So they might have to ident a couple of meetings and post-implementation review meetings. And the ISO, 20% is more than enough on five days, so it's a full day dedicated, so it should be fine. So we go to the resource in what we do is we just put 20% to every body year, 20% for everybody. But we need to keep the duration to five days. So we go here. Iteration now, we want to keep the duration the same back here. Okay? We still have a conflict because one of those is the developer here is 100% for the task that is being run in parallel and 20 per cent here, I think that's an x to the next bullet point here that we'll fix this with attending the warranty period duration of ten days, or the warranty period is the period during which the BBC, the system we have some resources are located after implementation to if there are some issues that we can be quick off the market, fixed them. Peace necessary at least for the warranty period, 20 per cent. So it's not even there. So I'm just going to add it like this initially business analyst done. We don't want to change the duration. Keep this in duration. So the PAC ten days. But we wanted both of them to be at 20%. We don't want them to just sit at a desk all day waiting for for a problem to occur. So we just put 20, 20% percent. It will be done this way. Then single-story chance to duration NOT and we're gonna keep the duration the same. 41. 400 Assignment Solution part 2 b: Now for the last task of this assignment, adding a timeline. We go under the View tab, we click on Timeline. Yes, I wanted a timeline. There's several ways to hard task grew timeline. You can either drag the task or right-click and say Add to timeline at the bottom. I just want to have some task here that are not too long, not too short. So whenever bit shorter for instance. So I want to start off project. I wanted to do milestone here. Start off project. I wanted to, so planning is five days, so they might show a B, two spots. So I don't think people would be interested. Instead, I will be doing the design. I will be showing the design, will be showing the software development. I will be showing the training and testing that's 40 days, that's quite sufficient. And then implementation, implementation, it looks like it's going to be, today's gonna be a bit too short too. It's not really timeline wealthy. So I'm just going to show this extend his live here. Now software development that looks a bit too long. Can I add some subtasks so people were at least know what is going on during that period. So we're just going to add configuration, for instance. What else do we have after this decoding, the unit testing? Those two here and then the rework to timeline. Okay, so now we can see the start of the project. People are my steel. Ask me what's happening during that gap and see this planning on planning it, just going to put a plan in here. Let's say it. So that gives us a high-level breakdown of the task. As you can see, you can stagger them. So other task he under subtask under our mission is now complete. 42. 410 Recent MS Project versions : I'm now sitting in front of a version of Microsoft Project which is 2021, relatively recent. I just went to to highlight some changes have been made to this version as opposed to the previous version. So now Microsoft Project is like Microsoft Word. You could have used Microsoft Word 1015 years ago and you use it now, you don't see the difference. And that's, the idea is that they don't want companies to have to retrain their staff every time there's a new version. So everything that you know is valid for the, for the new versions of Microsoft Project. So having said that, there is some very subtle changes and improvements that have been made and no breakthroughs know groundbreaking changes. But I thought it might be worth mentioning to you, so I will just outline free challenges. The first challenge is, as you've seen in a course, they are timelines, which this is something I really liked that you can put on top. The challenge that has been made is that you can actually see the progress now on the timelines. So if you go to one of the tasks and you put a progress, you put a progress here. And now you can see a deeper blue for these. So that's one of the challenges that they have made. That might have been in the previous two anti 19 version, but I believe this is something relatively recent. Now the second change I want to mention is also the researcher leaves. We've seen several ways to link tasks. My preferred way to link task is when you select with control to tasks and then you go directly on the icon and you select this. These two rings together, they're showing the link. But another way that I mentioned also is that you click on the task and you go into the predecessor field. And when you click on it, you see the other number of the tasked. Now the change, we started 21, I believe maybe 2019 is that you can now see the task name, not only the task number, but you can also see the task name. So you can more or less pickup any task that you won't know. Please bear in mind what I've said that we don't want to link task from one group to another group. So that makes the interests a bit more limiting, um, but you can still see it. So I thought I'd mentioned that. So not only the task number, but also the task name. Now the third challenge is that they've added a new field here, which is called the task summary. Let's find it. You go down. There's few fields. Task summary name. What that does is that more or less tell you under which group this task is. So there's a bit of repetition, you could say, well, but already see it here. So why I did here? I think the way the reason that they do this is let's say if you want to copy and paste and you put that in, in an Excel for instance, then you would have a mark here, you would, then you would know from which group it belongs. The second reason I would see, Let's say that you would have a very large amount of tasks belonging to one group. And therefore, that saves you having to go back up and you can see the task scenario name here. So let's hit them in for a pure scale, your point of view, this is the chance that have been made as they are new versions and prove a little bit on the resourcing, improve a little bit on the reporting. It's very subtle. 43. 420 WBS For MS Project: Welcome back. So I had a question regarding WBS. Someone asked me another project. What is the point of this WBS thing? I think that if you don't know what a WBS is, you don't have to worry about this. But if you know what the WBS is or if you're interested in finding out. Stick with me. I have also added my video from my other project management course. Why are explained in more detail what a WBS is? It's more or less a year archae that we have. So refer to that video if you want to understand what it is. Now, before I go into WBS, I need to talk to you about the numbering of tasks, like on this example here, I just have the task name, but what I can do is I can go under the former gunshot and I can put an outline number here that gives you the outline from the start. Year are key to the fishery archi want to free after it's all the 3.14, 0.24, 0.14, 0.11. And you get the idea. What you can do as well is you remove this outline number from here so that these appeared is only the text. And you can add it as a colon, outline number. And there's plenty a leather number and the likes. So here it is. So you can just do this and you can move the colon if you want over there. But this is a send numbering. So this is more or less most of the time, I believe this is used as a WBS SAR key to define and all the tasks of a project. But if you want to be more precise or if you work in companies that have a specific way to name the Iraqi, then you can go here under the Project tab, you go to WBS, you click defined code. Here, you input a bit of a prefix here. So I have put one here. Let's say you want to put a specific, put a, b, c for instance, ABC. Let's say this is a project ABC. So what you see is, I want the first level, the highest level to be perfect with ABC. That would be my project number, the highest level. And then you choose my level one, I want it to be numbers, uppercase, lowercase, or characters. So I'm just going to put, let's say uppercase letters. Now, I actually changed my mind. I'm just gonna put numbers so we don't get confused. So that gives you an idea of what it would look like. And the third level I wanted to be back to uppercase. Alright, so I'm just going to click, Okay, now I'm going to go here and I'm going to bring back the WBS. So this is now the Yorkie. As I, as I have defined. I said I want a, B, C as a top-level. After I wanna go into numbers, after it and I want to go back into liters and after, it looks like it takes numbers by default for the rest. So specific used, as I mentioned, my videos, mostly used by business analysts. I think there's a project manager. I don't think it's relevant, but I think it's good that they wanted to put that here just in case you need it. But, um, regardless, I find that sometimes using the outline number, I find that quite useful when you are discussing your project, we staff and instead of seeing all these tasks here, task, you can say for two to four, for instance, you can see 413 and an x. So it's easier to, to talk a bit about that task. Okay, so that was a quick, a quick video on WBS as a good question that may more of those short videos. 44. 49 WBS: Before we move on to the next part of planning, I just wanted to briefly mention a tool as we are in requirements that business analyst use sometimes too. Visualize the requirements that are required by the business on the project. So it's called a WBS or the work breakdown structure. And it's just a fancy way to decompose deliverables into smaller chunks. So it can be used, it's used mostly by business analysts, but it can also be used by project manager. So for instance here actually I have the example of a project that I have decomposed using the WBS chart. So the way it works is it goes from the more complex to the more detailed component, and it works with sub-categories. So if you have, for instance, I have the higher component, which is my project is to go on holidays. I decompose this project into the key activities that I feel are required to deliver this project. And then under each key activity, I have smaller activity and the reach. So if I just take one example, decide destination. So my project would be similarly days. And my sub project, if you like, my sub component would be decided on destination. Endo, decide on destination. I would have brainstorm ideas. Check the way. The next sub-component is, how am I going to decide on E ternary? Another look at the timing. I'll have a look at the stokes I wanted to have and ascites that I want to visit. So in other words, it's when you go from top to bottom you get more and more granular. I need to good way not to forget anything. It's called WBS work breakdown structure. Just wanted to mention it just in case you hear about it and you can see yep. I've heard of that. I know what it is. 45. Gantt Chart with Excel - Step by Step process: Now let's get right into it as they'd like to see on YouTube. So to start with, I'm just going to create two tabs. I'm going to rename this one schedule. That will be creating another town that I will be calling settings. So it looks proficient audited a bit. And in a setting. So we'll be using this one to do to put somebody ideations and also to have some sales named named sale. So I'm just going to have a couple of them settled on this, on this tab. I don't want to name too many cells, otherwise you might get confusing. I think it's better if we refer to the cell numbers themselves as, as much as we can. In this tab here, the Schedule tab there will be, the task will be listed here. But I just wanted to put the preferences here a little bit below. You could always move them to a different tab. But I think it's very useful to start with this where you can change preferences and see them on, on the Gantt chart itself as you input them. So here we will have some preference settings and I will put the value of the preference and administer them. So it will be clear when we progress. Now for the tasks themselves, I'm going to cheat a little bit. I'm just going to copy the square. Don't have to type. Explain at the same time. Okay? So this is the headings of the tasks. So I've been starting to the line number four here. So this is the task name will be here. I can give it a little bit more room. The name of the resource will be here. So here what I've done here is I'm just those who are if you're interested, if you don't know this, I'm just inputting a value here and duration, and I just select the 2Ls. And I'm going to Format and I Format alignment. I've put central Across Selection. So instead of merging cells which can, which can become a little bit messy here, put the duration here in days, and that will be the total number of days to start with at the beginning of the project when we do the initial assessment. And this column here will be when we want to update, when we want to shake how many days they have left to complete that task. From my experience, when you go to someone and you ask them, Okay, what's your percentage completion and our task? They usually look you blankly and they don't know, but if you ask them how many days left there is, then they can tell you, oh, yes, I have two days left, but they're never going to tell you I have 65% completed. So this is why I prefer to have the number of days to complete the task he has now. So all those with this yellowish color, those are hard-coded, so will not be calculated fields. And the one in white like this will be calculated. So this would be the mode of work down the days down. This will be the percentage completed I was just mentioning before, but there will be calculated and on track this will be automated that will tell you if we are on track or not. Dependencies who have made the same censoring here. And there is a dependency time that we'll talk about and the manual late. Just, it might be better as we get into these if I just go and input some values here. For instance, I have the start of project could be the, so I will be put everything on size nine. Putting your old sheet on size nine and the resource could be John. And the duration, total duration could be, let's say we've allocated ten days to complete. Let's say, as I mentioned, to start the you to start with, we will have zero here. But just for the example to compete, you have to. So that means that you have done, that's very simple. So you do ten minus two. So that means that if there's only two days to complete, do we assume that there has been eight days of work done and the percentage completed, also very simple. This amount of work done divided by the total. So that's 80 per cent done. I'm just going to center all those. A bit simpler. So on track would be calculated later. So there will be using some of these fields or we'll get to it the dependency types. It's a dependency with the Task Above. So this is where we'll be going into settings. So they have three types of Dependencies. Manual. So that means you just input the start it manually. There is after is we have a dependency with the previous task. That means it will start only when the previous task has been completed and send same as the previous task or both Task would be starting at the same time. So what we want to do if we don't want to have a validation. Here. We go to data. We go to validation. Data validation, which is agreeing to my other windows will bring it back And what we want to put here is a least validation settings, a little list, and we select on the source. That is, if you don't know how this works and you just select these three fields. Now we can choose manual after. Awesome. So as the first task I'm going to put manual which makes sense. And this is where you put your your debt, maybe 1st of December 22. And all those fields here are calculated. Now before we go into this calculated fields that are really the engine of these schedule here, we need to have a couple more settings. We actually, we have tried to hide our first settings. So the first one, it's today's date. So N value of this would be today. That's a field that will use to validate some things. And so this can be hard-coded. You'll understand why is that. This is the data that we use to baseline our project. But if you want to have a look at these Project going back in time, you could see it, change it. But to start with, we'll just put today's date, which, which makes sense. I suppose. The second field that we need is, do we work on weekends? I think this is important because you have this Gantt chart, then you can use it for personal stuff or for work stuff. So it's a very useful. So here we don't really need to, but you could have another validation here that you could say, yes, no validation. Bit neater, I suppose. So this worry, if you try easy to use your keyboard, you can just use your mouse. And then you do what we've done before you evaluate it. He least you go in here and you just say those two and down. And then you put work on weekends to start with. Yes. So this is used for her to calculate completion. I've just done some formatting here, so it looks a little bit better. I'm talking about the description. What do we can do is what I wanted to do is to have a name of those cells. So these are, we're just going to call it today. And this we're just going to call it weekend work. So I'll just put this to sell them outside here so I can remember more easily. But the way we named the cell, there is two ways that you can name a cell. The first way is just to go just on the cell and here you give it a name by just putting just here in this field here. And you can go here and you can call it, we can work. Now, those cells are be named, go into formula here, Name Manager. And this is where you see all your names and you can confirm yes, disease, this is what I've written and he sees there you can name your field here, but this is not an accept training I suppose. So here this is a way I've configured it. If the dependency type is after, we add one day to the style date of the previous task. If it's Sam, we just use the standard of the previous task or they are both food have the same, the same style that, and then otherwise we just go back to manual. So this is how you would fill in these fields here. Obviously a really beautiful lighting. So this is not on date formatting is, I'd like to put it and more and more global generic format because he obviously amino Australia here. So that would look a bit strange maybe for the Americans. So the way I like to format it is I'm just going to do a custom one and I'm just going to put the day like this, the month ending here like this. So this way, it's universal. It's for everyone. Just going to put a little dash in between, true, if that's required. So this way we have our debt here as we have the manual, manual dead set here. So it makes sense that the star that is like this, the next field is the finish date. So the way I typed it is this way. So first we check if we work on weekends. If we don't work on weekends and we have to use these these workday which allows you to add days, but without taking into account the Saturdays and Sundays after we subscribed one. So it takes you to exactly the same same Davis and punish day. If we are not on the on the weekend work if we don't work on weekends, they're just a matter of adding the days and subtracting one as well and done until so don't until this is a formula for don't until what I wanted to do, I want it to calculate in theory how much progress has been made and where we should be in a date. So instead, it's exactly the same formula as this one with the difference is that we use the work completed. So that will take us exactly interior up until the point where the task has been done. And then we'll be able to show on the Gantt chart Where we add what has been done in what has not been done. So it's, it's the same. The difference is that we are using instead the work that has been done as opposed to the initial one. So this is, is that I just wanted to do a little bit formatting, wanted to form, Format all these. And I love to give myself a generative model of rows. But as optional, you can take some rows here and you just group them. Outlined group. So this where you can remove them so it doesn't look too cluttered. So you can play with these also as far as formatting is concerned so that it clear. So don't type things in the wrong. I'd like to put a little bit lighter shade of the same color here, lightest shade here. So I knew that this is where I need to input any others. All the others are being calculated. So we've explained all the fields up until this one. Now we just need to do a little bit of formatting. So I said this one will come back to it. So on track, this is more or less using the dawn until, and the problem starts when we have only done until the day before today. So in other words, that means that we are late. So here this is the formula. The formula is not working at the moment because we need to define two very important fields. So this is this part of the name cell, if you like, that. I had before, I didn't want to have to tap this strand symbol all the time. So what I'm doing here, I'm just showing you have names, one cell tick and one self cross. So this, this, if you like, we call it tick, tick. This one here, we call it cross. And we need to make sure that the font is Wingdings. Two different here is windy. This is just to show how it would look like. So instead of typing this trench characters here, I will just put tick and cross. And I just need to make sure that these, all these columns here, we just go back to the food colon. Sure that all this colon here are put into the Wingdings font. Okay? So this seems to be working in the moment. So this is the way it works. If we have finished, we have laid when we Wendy's done until it is smaller than today. And also, I'm just checking that the task is not completed. So if the days to complete the zero here, then obviously we are also on track, but we cannot say that we are late if the task is completed obviously. So it could be a Tesla has completed in the past, but as it's finished, it's okay. Now, before we move on to the child Part, just wanted to do a bit of formatting that before I do just want you to other here quickly the project completion date. The project completion date is not the date of the last task, but it's the dead when the latest of all the tasks is completed. So therefore here, I'm just gonna put a max of all the finish date. And that should give me the hundred of the project. That's it. So this is the 10th of December, which is the date of the latest. So a little bit of formatting. So I'm just going to clean that up, put everything in the same board here. I would like to have these turn green if there is a big tick. So what I do is I create a new rule and go use a formula to determine. And I will put the first field here. We said the daughters to make sure it drugs among older roads when is equal to tick. That's the advantage of having themselves. And I will just give you these green here. And then that works or just go back to Conditional Formatting. I duplicate that rule and I will put, instead of putting tika will put cross. And that will give me some red eye. So I don't like this red. I just wanted to softer red. So I'll put this one instead. Okay, There's another formatting that I like to do is I want to remind us that when there is manual here, we need to put a date. Otherwise, it doesn't work obviously because we say we want to manually. So I'm just selecting these conditional formatting new rule and just see when the, when the cell value of the field nearby of this one without the total is equal to manual. Then I want to have the color that I used to make sure that something is input today. I don't want to put any big warning I just wanted to put this this way. So if we have a date here that is manual, we want to make sure that we have something here. So after those, so that goes blank. But if it's manual, then we need something here. Okay. So let's just first of October to have consistent with late. The last piece of formatting that I was showing before was on the, on the introduction is to. For this field, you can go to Conditional Formatting and you can just apply some icons. So the one that I've selected, all of these, this one here. But obviously if you prefer some, you can just add a, the star it just to give you a high-level overview of where we add. So this is done. These can be formatted with the blue, the complimentary color. Alright. Now before we go into Gantt Chart the chest and went in and make sure that we have all our preferences ready. So I've pre and put some of those then and just need to name them. So show schedule from this will allow you to have a different view of the Gantt chart if you want to let to you six months in the project or whatever you do and you don't wait to see all what happened in the past and you can just show when the Schedule we start on the screen. So this is where you wouldn't put your date here. Anyway, name, we're going to name this cell show from. So it'd be doing here, show from its number of days that will be showing on one cell. So if you have one, you could have one day, five days, and 30 days for monthly, and you can even put 365 days if you like. But this will be these Purcell just putting the name here, the show grid. So this is because as he tasted so much on showing the grid or another. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna give myself the option to add or remove show grid and then show two today on tasks, do I want to have really the today's date highlighted on the task? It could look a bit messy or you might like it, so we have the option to turn it on and off. There is some text here that I've added for reminders. They'd bit of explanation. But this is it. So now we are ready to start inputting the dates. The date here will be show from which is a few that we have defined earlier on. So we don't have metro Format here doesn't matter. There should be the date there. So here I've put a reference there that we'll use to compare. Then here we have the previews, date plus the amount of data that we have these days that we have decided days per cell here. So I'm just going to put here these peer cell. Okay, Can we go do that quite. We copy and paste all these and put tilde. Let's see. The BOB and I should give us one year on weekly basis, on a weekly basis anyway, we can always adjust that later on and we will this we need to put the year, but we only we don't want to put to you at every cell, so we need to make sure that we only put do you want. So the way we can do this is we are actually checking what is the year of the field before the year of the fetal before here, which is our reference, the field not the same as this year. You these then show the date. Then we copy this field again. Otherwise, we just put nothing. And I'll explain why. Let's just copy that all the way across. Now it's not showing because there's only one year. So what would the reason why I've just leave these easy? Because I wanted to use the Format team instead to make it simpler. And I'm going to format this just to show the year 2022. Now that seems to be working that the next thing is the month. So I'm doing more or less the same thing. But using mom this time, the date, otherwise, just put nothing. Once again, I wouldn't be copying that all the way across. So we should only show total. And the format of this is just put Mmm, just to make sure we only see the month. Okay, So we making progress. Now the two of the features we need to put this one the day of the week and to the date itself. Just copying this date. Just copying the date, the date from above. It's just going to, I'm just going to play with formatting. So here as a Format, I will be putting food day, so which would give me the formulae, the and then for this one, I'm just going to do the same, but I'm just going to Format with only 12 days relativity, so that's it. So this one, I'm just going to copy all the way across. This is it? So we have, this doesn't look good, but hopefully that will improve. This field is a little bit big. We can start making things look a little bit better. So what we'd be just taking all these centralized, making sure it's or font nine. Okay. Now, I just wanted to test if we go back here and you see instead of Wendy, let's say we want every seven days, see if things have changed. Is once it endears years. We have we have the mom, so everything is okay. Now let's just do a bit of formatting on the dates. To start with. Say we want to have the month of one color and alternating Mm. So we're just going to put these, for instance, these type of color here, this one. And what I want to do is I want to change when there's a change of moms. So how do I do this? I just go into the conditional formatting here. And I say new rule, use a formula. I'm going to use odd and even. If the month is all done, I put one color and if not, then I'll leave the kernel by default. Use the debt is given amount of muon with this color. And then a should be alternating. Alright, so and I copy that across. So that's the way a copy my Format, disengage if you know where all these usually the pen brush, put it all the way across. And so that turns a colonial month. I'm not fully satisfied with these blue and other blue here. Just putting another blue bit of a deeper blue so we can differentiate. And I'm going to put to the font in white. That's it. Okay. All of these second printing board. Okay. Okay. Now the day I'm just gonna give once again, I'm just going to select all and I'm going to give it a bit of a Formatting. I'm just going to put this light color here. So I am just going to Format Dos field here. I want them to look different on weekend. I'm going to select those fields. I'm going to go to conditional formatting, new rule, determining which cells. And I'm going to put it this week, they should be a one or seven. And when it's the case, I will put a darker value here. So we have some, okay, I'm doing the same for the day here. Conditional formatting new rule based on the value. I'm just going to do this. We deal silane, gonna give you that color here. What I would take this and I will apply the formatting to everything. And then we have our weekends in a different color. So I'm going to start to bring the sales few cells a little bit closer so we have a better a bit of view of what he start to look like. Okay, so this is starting to look a little bit better already. Now, what I will do is I will freeze the screen here so we can go pretty spin here. So here if I change the days, then it should be changing here. Here. Beautiful. 1014 for a fortnight. Okay, very good. And I need to remove this. Now. We are getting very close. We have our dates setup. Now. There is just the new two Format, BCE. So it just show the year of the date. So the Format Sales, custom. Just a year or the date. Go. Don't worry about this. As I said, this is gonna be gone to Paris soon. So now we are going into the formatting of the Gantt chart itself. Now let's get started with the formatting of the Gantt chart. So to start with, we're going to put some values in our cells. And after we're going to hide those values and we're going to put color-coded display instead. Now, this is the formula that I will be using in for every sale we need to take this. So there's free status that cell could be in if you like. The first educes. There is there was no activity during that period. And how do I know there's been any activity? Well, I will just check the date itself, this range of date and see if something finished before, then. I know it's out. And if something started after that, I know it's out. So this is what I have here in my notes. If they ended of tasks smaller than that range, or either start is greater than range, then there was no work happening in that period. Now, just a note on Excel 365, there are easier way to do this instead of this nested IF AND IF and their lives. But I just wanted to make sure that everybody could do the, this is why I'm using the old version notation all the way a free 65 myself, but this way I can be sure that no one is missing out. Now the second thing that we do is Dawn, how do we take this? And we check if the task has been completed or left to compete a zero, or if the work done during a dead beyond the data. And so that means that if you have done until 27 for instance, so all those dates should be shown as done. For this is how we do it and not done is all the other dates. So he's not out. It's not done, then it's not done. That's it. And do a little bit of formatting. Here you go. So I'm going to drag that all the way around here because would be hiding those, those, remember? And then I'm just going to put it here. So as you can see, it's all out, out non-dot, not done. So there's a lot of lot of out for the moment. That's because we don't have that many tasks. But I could add a few tasks here. From now on, everything is in Formatting. Now there's gonna be a few formatting here, so I'm gonna go through them relatively quickly. The first condition or rule that we put is we want to show to the discrete colors. So if putting, putting it here, if the flag obviously show today is yes on tasks. And the show today is always showing on the headings. And if we are today, obviously, we are going to highlight this on the chart which will look like this. So let's check if we say show to the on-task know. So it is no truly actually that reminds me that we haven't really put it today here. That's something that we can do is we can conditional format this one as well too, to show today, which are checking if we are today and if the range includes today. So if that's the case, I'm just gonna give you this quarter because I wanted to show if we have a monthly view see, I just wanted to show the month where two there was something else that we want to fall Format is the weekend we want to put the weekend grayed out if we're not working on weekend. So we'll just do the same. And we put a light gray here. The weekends are being great at now. Next we are formatting the sales that, that shows are done. We can give one type of blue, so cell value equal to don. We do this. So we can see some already. And then we go here and we do minus rules, and we duplicate this rule. And we just do the same for not done, and we just choose a color for something that is not done. So not done. And then we choose a color. And we can take these one time being. And then we apply all this. So obviously, after we just need to put that across everybody, yes, that's starting to show The only thing left to do as far as formatting is showing this grid here. So conditional formatting, new rule condition is show greed. Yes. So if the show grid is yes, then we put some grids. So how do we do this? We go to the border. We put the top the bottom. But I would like to have a bit of a not a strong gray. Just going to put something a little bit lighter here. Just a quick note on the grid. We need to make sure that when we were starting to pilot the conditional formatting for this one, but we starting to pilot the conditional formatting, we need to make sure that all those are really clearly, don't have any grid on it. So for instance, this one, we take it and we need to go back to Format border and make sure that we have known. So if you have a challenge when he's agreed to think this is something that needs to be done. But now my greets is setup. So if I just press yes, we will show the grid. And if not, then we don't show it. Now, there is just one thing to do is we need to, to remove those out and not done. So how do we do that? So we select everything this way and then we apply the magical formatting very obscure that Microsoft is giving us is free time semi-colons just for each times. It sounds like a strange girls, but then it's done. Okay. We can do the same here, or if we put something on top, you'll be the same. So I think which we can do is we can go to textbooks. We could do the same system and, and just hide all these. But also we can do something on top. Is we can go here. And we can see, for instance, Project Timelines, something along those lines. And then we put the background, we put white. You can put can center it. Put it in bold here. So this is a broader view. We have a tall now we have the preferences, we have the fields. So we need to make sure that although all those fields, if we use them at some stage, are also part of the, part of the process. They also put them here. We can hide this. Now. We can, what do we can do is we can also do the same thing. We can group those, we go to data Grouping. Then if we want to remove them, we can remove them so we can focus on that, on our schedule. So that's pretty much it. And then you can play around with those dates. You have the settings here, you have the flags, you have everything working. You can play with. The Greed is no. Show to the on-task. Yes, that's it. You show it here. There is per cell. So you have, if you put seven, you have it a weekly view. And obviously this one, it's not really worthwhile. But if you had a very long project, 250 days, then I would start to make a little bit more sense. And if you put 30 days, then that's done by the month. So this is showing everything practically darn sure. Schedule from once again, you could put to do first of February, it was 22 and will show you all the moms where there was no activity, but it's just to show you it can get started. Work on. We can yes. No. So if you put Gifts, then we don't need all those gray areas. Work on weekends years, two days that then once again, if you want to have a historical view, then you can change the today's date and pretend that you are another date looking at these Project. That's it. I hope you enjoyed and I hope you can also reproduce it. Just let me know when commence if you would like something added or removed from these 46. Wrap up and conclusion: So that's it, We're done. You've done the course to now you might be wondering, am I missing out on something? I'm hearing about all these courses where there's tons of functionalities, all these reporting and financing and the lights being explained. What I'm gonna do. So let's have a look at other types of functionality that MS project can have. And I am suggesting you do not use unless you are really, really have to. For instance, the reporting. I mean, when you join a company who is going to be interested in your MS project reporting, who going to say, yes, the company has all these reports already in place. But there is this Pm here is doing is MS. Project report let's use his or hers report. Very unlikely. You would have to fit in. You will have to use the report they do sometimes when they use MS Project Server, they will have some reports that come out of the cell and it will take some information from your schedule. But this is on a case-by-case basis. You will not be doing your own stuff. So in other words, you will have to learn from scratch using the method central finance. I think that I've never, I think it's a terrible idea to manage your finance or even create your finance with MS Project because you need to have every task on the schedule that is one billable and two, that would attract some costs and lets you put zero cos and unlocks and it all becomes too complicated. So another example of functionality that I'm running away from is, and this is from my personal experience. Is there is a function that, and I think nowadays they make it more obvious that is a function of MS Project where you can link server schedules together. So that happens several times. Someone admitting, especially when it's a new program being put together as this ID. Well, why don't we group all skeletal together? And at the beginning I was very enthusiastic about it, yes, and I was helping in an annex, but now, when this happens, I'm just keeping quiet. I don't want to be the new node, the negative one in the room. And I just let it go by itself. Usually after a few weeks, everyone forgets about it. You know, but a schedule that is very efficiently manage using the merging of MS Project schedule. Please send me a note. I'd like to hear about it. But you know, if they had the functionality, I'm sure it happens, but from my experience, why do it? When you have several complex projects merging them together and I just I just pretty thick, It's one very dangerous. And two, I really don't see the benefits. So that's it. So there's other functionalities like everything. The purpose of the schedule was for you to get started right from the start. Forgetting everything else, takes the first six steps. And you've noticed, I'm sure that some of these steps are not even MS project is saved them or setting up. They are not creating new schedule itself. There are more, some setups. Just use the basic stuff, make it perfect, reduce the amount of things to be perfect. As Jack Dorsey says, it's one of my favorite quotes. You'll see it in. If you take some of my courses, just stick to this. And if you stick to these six main press, maybe two or three from the advanced section, nobody would have anything to say about your schedule.