Inactive Tasks

Introducing Inactive Tasks in Project 2010 Inactive Tasks is a powerful new feature in Microsoft Project 2010 Professional that allows you to cut tasks in your projects, while maintaining a record of these cut items. Inactive Tasks allows you to quickly and effectively:
· Manage Scope: As project begins to go over budget or over schedule, inactive tasks should be used to manage the scope of the project and retain a record of the tasks that you cut. Later, if there becomes additional funding or more time, you can re-activate some of the inactive tasks to fill the remainder of the budget or schedule
· Perform What-if Analysis: You may want to experiment with different combinations of adds or cuts to your project. Inactive Tasks gives you the ability to quickly test multiple options by temporarily inactivating certain parts of the project without losing the original data.
How to Inactivate a Task
There are several ways to inactivate a task:
· In the Tasks tab of the Ribbon, click Inactivate
Refer blogs.msdn.com for further details on Inactive Tasks

Task Calendar overrides Project Calendar

Create a calendar for a task within Project By default, tasks (task: An activity that has a beginning and an end. Project plans are made up of tasks.) are scheduled based on the project calendar (project calendar: The base calendar used by a project.). To define unique or specific exceptions (exception: An instance in which a task or resource calendar differs from the project calendar. An example is a resource that must work on Saturdays, but for which the project calendar does not include working time to cover these instances.), such as machinery that runs during nonworking time (nonworking time: Hours or days designated in a resource or project calendar when Project should not schedule tasks because work is not done. Nonworking time can include lunch breaks, weekends, and holidays, for example.), or an office move that can occur only on a weekend, you can create a task calendar (task calendar: The base calendar that you can apply to individual tasks to control their scheduling, usually independent of the project calendar or any assigned resources' calendars. By default, all tasks use the project calendar.) for individual tasks that override the project calendar.
Refer: Setting Calendars
On the Tools menu, click Change Working Time

Wrangling with Time Line

The new Timeline in Project 2010 has become an very popular way to present Project information quickly and attractively. Problem is, you can get a little carried away putting all your tasks on the Timeline, and then have trouble selecting only a few tasks to copy into another program, like PowerPoint or Word. Refer at blogs.msdn.com

Change the font and color of text on the Gantt chart

Many people know how to use bar styles to change the color of the bars on the right side Gantt chart. But I bet you don’t know how to use text styles to change the text on the left side of the Gantt Chart, and other sheet-like views. Let’s take a look at this. Refer blogs.msdn.com

Cost Resources

Add miscellaneous costs to tasks using cost resources
Cost resources provide an easy way of applying miscellaneous or multiple costs to a task, like airfare and dining— in addition to the more commonly applied costs like people’s salaries or per-use costs, such as consultant fees.
Cost resources don’t depend upon the amount of work done on tasks. Nor do they depend on any calendars used in the project, as do work resource salaries, or rate costs for material resources, such as computer time and rental machinery.
Read continuation of this article at blogs.msdn.com

Change the month the fiscal year starts on

Tips and Tricks: Change the month the fiscal year starts on

Organizer in MSP 2007 vs MSP 2010

The organizer is a dialog box that allows you to copy Project elements between files, or between a file and the global template. What is the global template? It is a special Project template that is associated with every project file that you create. For complete article, Refer blog.msdn.com

Project 2010: Introducing User-Controlled Scheduling

In Project 2010, we have introduced a new concept called "User-Controlled Scheduling". It's a collection of features designed to make Project a more flexible planning and schedule management tool. The idea is that you, as the project manager, can have complete control over when a task should happen. If and when appropriate, you can leverage Project's powerful scheduling engine to help forecast the date of a task based on various factors like dependencies, calendar, constraints, etc. But at any time, you have the flexibility to manually override Project's automatic calculations.
For complete article, Refer Project 2010: Introducing User-Controlled Scheduling

Roles vs. Generic Resources vs Named resources

Project Server 2010 supports both resource roles and generic resources. On the surface, these terms may appear to be redundant. If you want to call out a Developer in my project, do you do so by identifying a “Developer” role, or by creating a generic resource called, “Developer”?
You use roles during resource constraint analysis, part of the portfolio analysis process. Resource constraint analysis is the process of looking at the resource needs of a project proposal, and comparing that with the resource capacity of the organization. (For example, Proposal A needs 5 Developers, and our organization has 4 Developers available.) In Project Server 2010, resource constraint analysis relies on roles. You can identify “Developer” as a role, and then assign that role to either named resources (“real” people), or to generic resources (placeholders). Project Server 2010 will only consider resources with defined roles during resource constraint analysis.
You use generic resources, on the other hand, are used as placeholders for named resources. You may have a generic resource named “Developer” that also has the role of “Developer.” Just like saying Joe is a developer, when you use a generic resource, you are saying that “Developer” is a developer. In the context of portfolio analysis, you should use generic resources when you know the role type and quantity needed for a project (for example, two Developers), but you don’t have to know the names of the actual people who will do the work Read more @ At a Glance: Roles vs. Generic Resources

Setting up resource constraint analysis (capacity planning, and demand planning)

Resource constraint analysis is one part of the portfolio analysis process in Microsoft Project Server 2010. When evaluating project proposals to determine which should be approved and added to your organization’s portfolio of projects, stakeholders use resource constraint analysis to weigh the resource needs of a project proposal with the resource capacity of the organization.
Before resource constraint analysis can happen, a few different elements must be configured correctly: primary roles, capacity planning, and demand planning
Read more @ Overview: Setting up resource constraint analysis

MCTS - MS Project 2010 Certification

Exam 70-178: Microsoft Project 2010, Managing Projects

How to Get Certified Free in Microsoft Project 2010

Preparing for and Taking an Exam – FAQ