Can Project fit my business needs?

[April]

I have a few questions to see if Project can meet the needs of my company.

1) I work for a marketing company, so we usually have several projects going
on at the same time with the same people working on them. For example, Leslie
may have to make edits to a poster, update a newsletter and also meet with
the client in the same day. Can I view all project deadlines going on in a
particular day? Also, can I view all the deadlines Leslie has in a particular
day?

2) Since we have clients, they get a list of deadlines for the project
related to them (however we only include deadlines we think are relevant to
them). Is there a way to have a regular project timeline with all deadlines
and then a client timeline with some deadlines for the same project? Could we
send the client this timeline?

3) Since as I said before, each of us may have multiple deadlines on the
same day from different projects, can Project communicate with Outlook to
send us reminders for what we have due on a specific day? If one deadline is
a 2 hour meeting, could Project have Outlook schedule it as a meeting for us?

4) If our deadlines got pushed back a day for a project, would Project
update all dates in the timeline based on that? If so, could it communicate
these changes to Outlook for the reminders?

 

[Jim Aksel]

April, I put my comments ** in line ** below. The short answer is "Yes" it
can work well for your office.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

I have a few questions to see if Project can meet the needs of my company.

1) I work for a marketing company, so we usually have several projects going
on at the same time with the same people working on them. For example, Leslie
may have to make edits to a poster, update a newsletter and also meet with
the client in the same day. Can I view all project deadlines going on in a
particular day? Also, can I view all the deadlines Leslie has in a particular
day?

***
Certainly. The way you set up the projects impact how easily this is done.
Assuming you have a small office with only a handful of tasks in each
project, you can do it all in one file. As a good practive, group the
project tasks together by project not by person working them.

Assuming you have assigned Leslie as a resource from the resource sheet, you
can use the Resource Usage View (View/Resource Usage) or some of the reports
(Report/Reports... from the main menu) to view some of this information.

"Deadline" is a specific term in project, you probably mean "Finish Date"
and those reports are avalailable as well under the Reports menu. You can
read more about "Deadlines" in the help. They are useful for you as well.

***

2) Since we have clients, they get a list of deadlines for the project
related to them (however we only include deadlines we think are relevant to
them). Is there a way to have a regular project timeline with all deadlines
and then a client timeline with some deadlines for the same project? Could we
send the client this timeline?

***
You can do this two ways. If you will be sending information to a client,
it may be more useful to have each project in a separate file. In either
case, you can insert one of the spare Flag fields (insert/column...) and then
filter to where Flag1=Yes, etc. You can use many flag fields or text fields
in combination. You could put the project name (example: Police Office
Brochure) in a Text1 field and then use the flag1 field to identify
milestones you want to show to the customer. You could create a view that
filters to "Police Officer Brochure" and Flag1=Yes and send the customer a
PDF of that.

A note of caution on Project files... you are always sending 100% of all the
information in the file. There is no way to keep someone from viewing all
the information in the file once they open it. You can password protect
Read/Write and who can open the file. Once the file is open, they get all of
it... no exceptions. What you can do is send them PDF prints of only the
information you want them to see.
***

3) Since as I said before, each of us may have multiple deadlines on the
same day from different projects, can Project communicate with Outlook to
send us reminders for what we have due on a specific day? If one deadline is
a 2 hour meeting, could Project have Outlook schedule it as a meeting for us?

***
This is a function of Project Server, way too expensive a solution unless
you are a large office. I believe there is a way to get Project Professional
to communicate with Outlook. If I find it, I'll post back. For now, you may
just want to run the "Who Does What " Reports or another report and then
e-mail that manually. The level of integration you request is a nice
feature ... it comes with a nice price.

***

4) If our deadlines got pushed back a day for a project, would Project
update all dates in the timeline based on that? If so, could it communicate
these changes to Outlook for the reminders?

***
You need to setup project to link the tasks appropriately and then the
schedule will automatically move things to the right if something runs long
or gets changed. That said, the best advice I can give you is *never* key a
date into a project task, let the software schedule the dates for you. For
example, you would link "Create Brochure" and "Review Brochure with Boss" as
two serial tasks. If Create Brochure is supposed to run 4 days (M-Th) and a
review on Friday, then if you are properly linked and you decide "Create"
will take 6 days, then project will automatically move the "Review" task out
to next Tuesday when you key the revised duration into the "Create" task.

As for communicating via Outlook, it is a checkbook issue and requires
Project Server. For a small office, you should probably be looking at
Project Standard.

Post back with any additional questions you may have. We're here to help.

 

[salgud]

I have a few questions to see if Project can meet the needs of my company.

1) I work for a marketing company, so we usually have several projects going
on at the same time with the same people working on them. For example, Leslie
may have to make edits to a poster, update a newsletter and also meet with
the client in the same day. Can I view all project deadlines going on in a
particular day? Also, can I view all the deadlines Leslie has in a particular
day?

Yes and yes.

2) Since we have clients, they get a list of deadlines for the project
related to them (however we only include deadlines we think are relevant to
them). Is there a way to have a regular project timeline with all deadlines
and then a client timeline with some deadlines for the same project? Could we
send the client this timeline?
Yes

3) Since as I said before, each of us may have multiple deadlines on the
same day from different projects, can Project communicate with Outlook to
send us reminders for what we have due on a specific day? If one deadline is
a 2 hour meeting, could Project have Outlook schedule it as a meeting for us?

Don't think it can do all that automatically, but part of it.

4) If our deadlines got pushed back a day for a project, would Project
update all dates in the timeline based on that? If so, could it communicate
these changes to Outlook for the reminders?

Yes

It will do most of what you want. However, there is a fairly steep learning
curve to get there. I strongly suggest you find a class, at least 2 days,
from an instructor who knows how to use Project. These can be hard to find,
but a "theoretical" understanding from someone who doesn't understand
Critical Path Method scheduling won't serve you in the real world.

HTH

 

[April]

Thank you. Your comments were very helpful. If my office were to purchase the
server, could you tell me how that would help us fit our business needs?
Having a program that can communicate with Outlook is very important for us
and I need to be sure that Project with server could do this. Will it be able
to e-mail or send employee's deadline reminders (for different steps of the
project due on a specific date)? Will it be able to send them reminders if a
deadline has changed that will notify them of the change? Could it even
schedule meetings for people? I need to know how well Outlook and Project can
be integrated.

Thanks!

 

[Jim Aksel]

Project Server is an expensive investment, it will do the job installed on
its own platform. In addition, you will need Project Professional on all
relavent desk tops.
It will integrate with Outlook and can be configured to work with things as
you requested. Not directly out of the box, but it can be configured as you
need.

However, there is a much better place to be getting information about this
topic. If you could repost your question to the Project Server newsgroup
(microsoft.publ;ic.project.server) they can answer all of that. This
newsgroup where we are discussing is intended for the desktop version of
Project (Project Standard and Professional).

Something else to consider - if you want things to work really well, you may
also want to integrate Project Server and SharePoint. Again, a very
expensive proposition but usually worth it for the right size company.

I am going to give my friends a plug here -- they are MSPROJECTEXPERTS.COM.
Several of us MVPs work there (I personally do not, but several do). Now
that I've made full disclosure (some of these guys are my professional
friends), I can tell you they are spot on 100% of the time .... they even
write the books about the topic.

So, to get more info, I would use those two resoruces. If you need someone
quite local to you, I can do some checking. Usually, if you are going to
step into this thing, I'd do it with the right people. I can help you with
some of the SharePoint and desk top stuff ... the Project Server stuff I bow
to my friends. [OK Gary and Dale, where's my 10 bucks?]
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com