Project 2016 for Beginners Part 1: The Project 2016 Workspace Video Lecture | MS Project: Become an Expert - Management

In this section I’m going to take you on
a tour of the Project workspace and we’re
also going to start creating a very simple
project.
And I’ll use that very simple project to
demonstrate key points concerning the Project
workspace.
You’ve already seen this Start screen and
you’ll probably see this quite a few times
during the course.
Although as you’ll see a little bit later
on you may want to disable the Start screen
once you really get used to using Project
2016.
You may decide that you can get along perfectly
well without it.
Now let me give you a quick tour of the Start
screen itself.
Over on the left we have an area which gives
us links to existing projects.
We have a Recent section.
Currently this section is empty.
As you can see the note there says you haven’t
opened any projects recently.
Once we start working on projects you’ll
start to see a list of recent projects appear
there.
And then below that there is a link, Open
other Projects, which gives us access to a
Windows Browse Dialogue so you can browse
your computer, you can browse any network
locations you have access to and you can browse
Cloud areas, such as your OneDrive storage.
Now we’re going to start with a new project
so we won’t be using that part of the Start
screen on this occasion.
In the top right we have some standard Windows
buttons.
The little question mark is Help.
Note the Screen Tip there.
Help and F1 is the keyboard shortcut for that.
Then we have Minimize and we have Maximize
or Restore, depending on whether your screen
is currently maximized or not.
And then we also have a Close button.
Below that we have my name and the account
under which I am currently running Project
2016.
This is very important.
If you’re the only person that uses this
PC and you’re the only person that uses
Project on this PC and you only have one account
that you ever run Project under then this
will always indicate that account.
But if, for example, you sometimes use a work
account and sometimes a personal account,
if you share this PC with somebody else you
may want to switch between accounts.
Well the facility here, Switch Account, let’s
you switch between those accounts.
And I’ll demonstrate that to you a little
bit later on.
Now let me talk about the rest of the Start
screen.
And I’m going to say this once more.
I won’t keep saying it.
You may not see exactly the same as me.
It will depend on a number of things.
But almost certainly the first thing you will
see here is a Blank Project thumbnail.
I’m going to click on that in a little while
and we’re going to create a blank project.
So that’s an empty starting point for a
project.
But I’m going to run through some of these
others first.
If you run projects that have an element of
similarity, maybe you do building projects,
marketing projects, then you may already have
a project that you’d like to base a new
one on.
And the second thumbnail here, New from Existing
Project, enables you to use an existing project
as a starting point for a new one.
The third thumbnail, New from Excel Workbook,
let’s you create a project from an Excel
workbook.
And what this basically means is that you
have perhaps a list of tasks on a worksheet
in an Excel workbook and you want to make
that list of tasks the starting point for
a project.
The fourth thumbnail, New from SharePoint
Tasks List, is a pretty similar kind of thing
but in relation to SharePoint.
So if you have a list of tasks in Microsoft
SharePoint and you want to use those as the
basis for a project you can use that option.
Now the other thumbnails all correspond to
different standard project templates.
So if I were working on a software development
project I could use the first template there,
Software Development Plan, and it would get
me started on a typical set of tasks as a
starting point for a software development
project.
Now you’ll see a whole list of these templates.
These templates you may think of in the old
terminology as boiler plates but nowadays
we generally call them templates.
And there are many there.
So Residential Construction is there, for
example.
New Business Plan is another one.
But there are available online many, many
templates that you can base new projects on.
And there is a Search facility at the top
here.
So if you wanted a project plan for a particular
thing you could do a search here.
In fact there are some standard searches,
suggested searches as they called underneath.
So Project Management, Project Plan, Project
Themes, etcetera.
Let’s suppose and this is definitely potentially
going to be very useful, I wanted to look
for a project plan for a wedding.
Let me do a Search on wedding.
This is of course an online facility so I
need to be connected to the internet.
Let’s try Wedding.
And it comes up with a Wedding Planner.
If I were to click on that wedding planner
then it would let me see a little bit more
detail about what this wedding planner is.
So it shows me the first few tasks.
It gives me a description.
Wedding Planner provided by Microsoft Corporation.
It tells me how big it is.
It gives me a bit of a description about the
wedding planner.
And then I could use that to create a wedding
plan.
And in fact that’s not very far removed
from what I’m going to do a little bit later
on.
But let me just close that for the moment
and go back to this screen because apart from
giving me potential Project Templates for
a wedding there are search results from other
Office applications.
So it shows me potentially other useful artifacts
related to other Office applications.
Let’s look at PowerPoint for instance.
There are seven found items related to PowerPoint.
Now each of these is a template for a PowerPoint
presentation.
So there’s a wedding photo album, a wedding
reception seating chart and a stylish photo
cards template.
Now there are other suitable wedding related
artifacts that can be used in Word, Publisher,
and Excel.
So we’re not really going to cover that
on this course but they can be very useful
links to other artifacts that you can use
with the other components of Office.
Having taken a look at that let’s go back
to the Start screen.
We just use the Back button there, the Browse
Back button.
It takes us back to the Start screen.
And we’re going to create a blank project.
Now as soon as I do this I want you to look
in the bottom left hand corner of the screen
because a little message will pop up for a
few seconds that you’ll get used to seeing
and after a while you’ll probably just ignore,
but I need to explain it to you briefly now
and then in a little bit more detail later
on.
So click on Blank Project, look down in the
corner, New tasks are created in manually
scheduled mode.
As you’ll see later on there are two modes
of scheduling.
There’s manually scheduled and there’s
auto-scheduled.
Most of the time I tend to work in auto-scheduled
mode.
And after you’ve been using Project for
a while you will choose which mode you prefer.
The fact that I currently have this in manually
scheduled mode and you may or may not have
it in manually scheduled mode really doesn’t
matter at the moment.
Don’t worry about that.
We’ll come back to that a little bit later
on.
What we need to concentrate on here is the
workspace overall.
So first of all in the top left hand corner
you have the Quick Access Toolbar that I mentioned
earlier on in the course.
You may not see quite the same buttons as
me there but we’ll come back to that in
a couple of sections time.
And in the top right hand corner you have
some standard Windows buttons.
Let me just hover over those.
So you have Minimize, Restore/Down and Close.
The main Ribbon is this.
So it’s a big block right across the screen,
very near the top.
I’m going to explain the Ribbon to you in
quite a bit of detail again in a couple of
sections from now.
Above the Ribbon in the middle is the name
of the current project.
We’ve just created a project.
By default it’s called Project 1.
If we created another one by default it would
be called Project 2 and so on.
Now below the Ribbon we have something called
the Entry Bar.
And the Entry Bar is something that we can
use to enter and edit data into our project.
You may or may not have that entry bar shown.
If you don’t see that don’t worry.
I’m going to show you in a while how to
show that if it isn’t shown already.
Basically the kind of thing we use the entry
bar for is this.
If I want to enter the name of the first task
in my project I click in the Task Name Field
there, first task name in the first row of
my project.
And then if I click in the Entry Bar I could
call it Task 1.
Having typed that I click on the tick mark
to the left of task 1 and that is the name
of my first task.
If I click down to the next row and I intended
to type Task 2, I could type Task 2, change
my mind, click on the X to the left, the cross
there, and that cancels what I’m typing.
That’s the Entry Bar.
More later.
Below the Entry Bar we have the Timeline.
I mentioned the Timeline much earlier on when
I was talking about what’s new and the fact
that you can have several timelines now in
Project 2016.
You may or may not see the Timeline.
If you don’t see it you can show it by,
if you go up to the Ribbon, above the Ribbon
there’s the word View.
Click on View.
Even if you don’t understand the Ribbon
just click on View.
And roughly in the middle, just to the right
of the middle of the commands immediately
under there there’s one that says Timeline.
And as you can see it’s checked.
Mine is ticked.
That means the Timeline is shown.
If I uncheck it the Timeline disappears.
Check it again, the Timeline is now shown.
So that’s the Timeline.
When I’ve got some tasks it will show those
tasks on the Timeline.
Now in fact I’ve just entered one task there.
It hasn’t got any work in it.
And the timeline can be set to run over a
period of time.
Now by default my new project is starting
today, so that’s December the 14th.
And because I haven’t got any tasks or work
that involve anything in them the end date,
the finish date, at the right hand end of
the timeline is also December the 14th.
So it’s not the most exciting project in
the world at the moment.
I’m not really doing much and therefore
it’s one of those situations where I can
safely say that my project is on time.
Below the Timeline is the main project window.
And by default on my installation I show a
Gantt Chart.
And a Gantt Chart actually comprises two parts.
It comprises the list of tasks.
It’s actually a table and we refer to this
as the table.
And on the right we have the chart itself
which is normally a pictorial representation
of the tasks in my project.
Now you may or may not have a Gantt Chart
shown.
If you don’t have a Gantt Chart shown you
will soon find out how to show a Gantt Chart
there.
And there will be situations when you’ll
want to see one of the many other types of
chart that you can show in the main body of
the display there, the main window.
Now just to give you a little bit more of
an idea of how that’s going to look let’s
go back to that first task, Task 1.
I’m going to click in the duration column
there in line with Task 1.
And I’m going to say that this is a two
day task.
Click elsewhere and there is my Gantt Bar
for a two day task.
Now there are various things about that bar
in terms of its color, its ends and so on
that each have significance and we’re going
to talk about those later on.
But basically as we start to build up a schedule
we’ll build up entries in the table on the
left and each of those will be represented
by a Gantt Bar or other appropriate symbol
in the chart on the right.
The next aspect of the workspace to look at
is the Status Bar across the bottom of the
project window.
At the left hand end there are optional pieces
of information.
One of the ones that’s shown there now is
New tasks are manually scheduled, which I
mentioned earlier on in this section.
And at the right hand end there are controls
for the view.
So we can do things like choose the view of
the project we currently have and we can also
use the Zoom controls, more on those later.
And the last part of the workspace that I
want to look at is what’s called the Backstage
or Backstage View.
Now what we’re looking at here is effectively
a project.
It’s a very simple project with one ask
in it at the moment but this is where we work
on the contents of our project.
Administration of projects, doing everything
from saving them to printing them to sharing
them, this is all done in what’s called
Backstage View or just Backstage.
And to get to Backstage View you click on
File which is above the left hand end of the
Ribbon.
So if I click on File it takes me into Backstage
View.
Backstage View has a load of options, Info,
New, Open, Save, etcetera, and we’ll be
covering those as we go through the course.
It’s also, for example, in Backstage View
where we set up project information.
When I’ve used Backstage View I get back
to my project again using that Back button
and that take me back into my project again.
So there we are.
That’s all the basics of the workspace for
now.
In the next section I want to take a quick
look at Help.
So please join me for that.