Project 2019: Accessing Task Properties
Welcome back to our course on Project 2019. In this section, we’re going to look at some other basic properties of tasks. I’m just going to go back to that first version of the wedding plan that we were looking at.
So the top one here. Remember, I’ve got it pinned to the top of the list. Makes it super easy to access. And I’m just going to open that by double-clicking.
Now, if I look at that first task. The one with the name Planning. If I click on the Duration field; the duration as I explained earlier has a default value of one day. You can see here with a little question mark next to it. It’s indicated that this is an estimated duration.
I can, of course, use these little scroll bars at the side. These little scroll arrows to increase the duration or alternatively decrease the duration. And you’ll see as soon as I do that the question mark is removed. So, it’s no longer an estimated duration because I’m inputting something into that duration cell.
Now, I don’t have to use these little scroll arrows just here. For instance, if I went into the Attire field, for example. I can literally click in this field. And can type something in there if I wanted to.
I could type 3 days, for example. You’ll see that! As I type that if you look up into the little bar at the top here. It also inputs 3 days. If I’m happy with that, I can click on the tick to accept it like so.
As you can see as I adapt and adjust the duration of these tasks. The bar in the Gantt Chart on the right extends accordingly. We now have these two bars showing as three days and the rest of my plan showing as one day.
We haven’t actually looked at the definition of working days, and working weeks and working hours as yet. But you can probably see from that when I’m talking about for example an eight-day task.
I’m talking about eight working days. That doesn’t include days at the weekend with the current calendar that I’m using on this project. Look very carefully at the bar chart on the right.
Because for the tasks that still have a one day estimated duration. You’ll see that at the right-hand end of each of those you’ve got a vertical line.
This one just here. Now it’s pretty much coincidence that it’s at the right-hand end of those bars.
That vertical line indicates the current date. That is essentially what I like to call the Today Line.
At any point, you can see where you are today in relation to the project. Or if you like where the project is in relation to today.
We’ve talked about the project start date. Supposing, I was entering this projec.t In fact, the various aspects of it had started a couple of weeks ago.
I’m a bit late setting this project up in Project 2019. Some of these things may have already happened. What I could do is change the project start date?
Look for example at that first planning task which says it starts on March the 14th. That’s the date that I entered it yesterday. That is currently the start date for this project. Let’s go into Project Information which you’ll find up here on the Project Ribbon and down into Project Information.
Let’s go in and change this start date to a date two weeks ago. You see I have my little calendar here. I’m going to select Friday the 1st of March and then click on OK.
Now, none of the durations have changed. But each of the tasks has an updated start date. Now, of course, I could change the individual task start dates.
For instance, if I wanted to change the date that the Attire task is starting. If I decide that Attire is something we maybe need to think about a little bit. I know that people need to sort out their clothes. But I think I’m going to leave that until after the Easter break.
I might want to change this Attire start date to after Easter. I’m going to put it a month in advance. Let’s say April the, let’s do 15th. That’s when the task is going to start.
Now, in doing that one of the problems. I have is that this task is now shut off to the right in my chart. If you look I can no longer see it.
That may or may not be a problem. But you know how to resolve that already because you know about the zoom slider.
Right in the bottom corner. We have our little zoom slider with our plus and our minus buttons to control it. The only reason, I can’t see it is because we’re not on that correct part of the Gantt Chart.
If you look at the dates running across the top. They don’t go as far enough into the future currently for me to be able to see the start date of this task.
I’m going to zoom out very slightly by clicking on the minus and there we go. You can see my little task pop into view as I zoom out a couple of times.
Of course if I wanted to, I can not only set the duration of each of these tasks. But I could start to actually set them out in time.
For instance, I could decide on a wedding day and assuming that I’m confident we’d be ready for that. I could plot that at some time next year as well.
Similarly, for each of those other tasks, I could set up a duration. I could decide on a start date. And I could start to put my project plan together with a lot more care and attention.
Hopefully with a lot more resemblance to what is actually going to happen. And that is indeed what we’re going to be doing over the next few sections.
However, this project if it’s just comprised of those roughly ten tasks it wouldn’t really be a very realistic project. What we’re going to need to do is put in a lot more detail. So we can make this into a realistic planning exercise.
Now, in order to do that, you need to know quite a lot more about tasks. And you need to know about things like dependencies and resources.
One of the things I’m going to tell you about. In fact, we’re going to start on this straight away. In the next section, you need to have an understanding of summary tasks and outlining. But for the balance of this section, I just want to look at information about tasks.
Now we’ve seen task name, duration, start and finish date. I mentioned work once or twice. Now, before I do this. If I look across my column headings where I have Task Name, Duration, Start, Finish, so on and so forth. If I drag this across very slightly, you can see that I don’t have a column currently labeled Work. I want to have a column called Work.
If you – do need to make adjustments to what columns you see here. If you look right at the end we have something that says Add New Column.
I’m going to click the dropdown. There is a whole host of different columns that you can select. They are in alphabetical order, making it slightly easier for you to find the one you want.
I’m going to scroll all the way down to the bottom. Then, I’m going to look for the one that says, Work. There it is! Let’s select it. You see I now have a Work column.
I’m just going to grab it and drag all the way across. And then, I’m going to drop it next to Task Name.
Now, you see I have my new column in between Task Name and Duration.
Let’s get back to just talking about information about tasks.
For any task in Project 2019, there is an awful lot of information about that task available. You may need to be able to manipulate that in some way.
I’ve got the Attire task selected. What I’m going to do is right-click on that row to bring up the contextual menu. One of the options, about fourth from the bottom there, is Information. I’m going to click Information and it brings up the Task Information dialog.
This is a dialog with half a dozen. or so. Tabs running across the top and each tab have information about the selected task. Much of the information won’t mean much at the moment. But by the end of the course, most of it will, hopefully.
Some things, I think the descriptions that you can see here! Pretty much explain what that particular piece of task information is about. So, for instance, you know about the name. But what about percentage complete or the amount of work that we’ve done?
Well, currently we haven’t done any of it so that’s why it’s showing as 0% complete. It’s an auto-scheduled task. We’ve briefly mentioned that previously. And you can see the start date and the finish date there. It’s not an estimated duration so that’s why this checkbox isn’t ticked. And it’s a three-day task. And it has a priority of 500.
Now the other properties on this particular tab are ones that we’re going to be looking at later on. But let’s look at the other tabs. So let’s jump across and take a look at predecessors.
What are these tasks predecessors? Which tasks much happen before this one? Or which tasks in some way depend on this one? Which resources does it use?
And there is also an Advanced tab with information like deadlines, constraints, specific calendars to use and so on. Virtually all of these we’re going to be looking at during this course. We can also do things like record notes about the task. Also, we can even set up custom fields with custom information about the task. So that’s the Task Information for that particular Attire task.
Let me Cancel out of this and just point out something I’ve mentioned a couple of times before.
Task Information is a good example of something which you can get at in a variety of different ways. With the same Attire task selected. If I go to the Task tab at the top and on the Ribbon. There is a button in the Properties group called Information. And that brings up the exact same dialog box. Let’s cancel out of there.
Another way I can bring that up is to just double click on the Attire task. You see I get exactly the same dialog box.
So a few different ways for you to bring up that Task Information box.
That is something important for you to remember. Being able to access this Task Information box quickly is something that’s going to be pretty important as you run through this course.
If you want to do a little bit of extra reading about Task Information. Remember that you do always have that Help button down in the bottom left-hand corner of the Task Information box.
So that’s it for this section. I will see you in the next one.
Deborah Ashby
Deborah Ashby is a TAP Accredited IT Trainer, specializing in the design, delivery, and facilitation of Microsoft courses both online and in the classroom.She has over 11 years of IT Training Experience and 24 years in the IT Industry. To date, she's trained over 10,000 people in the UK and overseas at companies such as HMRC, the Metropolitan Police, Parliament, SKY, Microsoft, Kew Gardens, Norton Rose Fulbright LLP.She's a qualified MOS Master for 2010, 2013, and 2016 editions of Microsoft Office and is COLF and TAP Accredited and a member of The British Learning Institute.
