Free Project Management Tools - Tutorials,Ebooks and Setups

In coming chapters, let us learn in detail with examples on the following topics: Maintaining Baselines – Creating copies of projects at various stages for comparison Assigning Baselines – comparing the baselines with the current project Updating of Baselines – how to update baselines in the middle of the project Updating, Scheduling Project – learn how to update the schedule and leveling of resources. Following are the different methods by which one can update the schedule and special features that you can perform as part of the schedule. With Spotlight Feature Updating Project by "Auto Actuals" Method Updating Project by Manual Method Removing Progress from Activities Suspend and Resume Activities Storing Past Period Performance Scheduling Projects Using Work Products and Documents – Tracking of project-related documents and work products Tracking Progress – enabling to create layouts to view and track the progress of projects Comparing Projects – using t

Cost accounts help you to track activity costs, project expenses and earned value throughout the project life cycle. Cost accounts can be established in a hierarchy available to all projects in the enterprise project structure (EPS). Overview: You can create cost accounts that can be assigned to activities in any project. Further, you can also add expenses, assign expense categories and all the details relating to the expenses. Firstly, create a cost account hierarchy, Go to Menu bar, choose Enterprise, then cost accounts. Click the Cost Account ID column label to display the cost accounts hierarchy. Setting up a cost account: Select the cost account immediately above and at the same level as the cost account you want to add, then click Add. Type the cost account’s ID and name and all other information relating to the cost account. If in case, you wish to use the existing cost accounts, select the project in the top layout, go to project details in the bottom pane

Activities are the fundamental elements of the project. These are the lowest level of WBS structure. Let us understand about activities in detail in this chapter. Use the activity table or activity network layout to add activities. Activity information can be defined in the activity details at the bottom layout of the activities window. Activities Overview: “General” Tab: Activity Type: Go to General tab of the activity details section and for any selected activity, you can change/modify the information of the activity like you can define or choose the activity type from options Finish Milestone Level of Effort Resource dependent Finish Milestone Task dependent WBS Summary Duration Type: You can then select the Duration type from the below options: Fixed duration & units Fixed duration & units/time Fixed Units Fixed Units/time % Complete Type: This will define how to calculate an activity’s percent complete, to choose among duration, p

In This tutorial, let us see how to create WBS and then add activities to the Project that we have created in the last tutorial. Once you have created the new project, you can rename the project as per your wish, here in this example, I have renamed it to “Own House” Project Name: "Own House" Step 1:  Go to WBS Tab from the directory bar, you can see the blank WBS. Step 2:  Click on “ADD” from the command bar, to add the WBS in the new project. Once you are done with the creation of WBS at level 1, you can proceed further to add and create a proper Work Breakdown structure and use the arrows in the command bar to adjust the hierarchy level, as shown below: Step 3:  Go to the Activities tab in the Directory Bar and here you will see the WBS Structure in different color bands with no activities. Step 4:  Click on Add to add activities and follow as per the dialog box instructions to name and number the activities. Step 5:  Select the type of acti