Through the series of Articles, I am going to explain; create & manage the Project through Microsoft Project 2013 Application. As part of this, I have created a Project “Space-Debris-Robo” through our previous Article “Microsoft Project 2013 – Create Project – Set Project Information“. We will extend that Project, to add Project Options. I am going to explain, what are the Project Options usually required for the Project, through this article, “Microsoft Project 2013 – Create Project – Set Project Options”.
Step 1. Open our Project “Space-Debris-Robo.mpp” which we have created in our Previous Article, “Microsoft Project 2013 – Create Project – Set Project Information“.
Step 2. Click on FILE tab -> select Options. Microsoft Project 2013 Application will open the “Project Options” dialog to allow us to change the Project options for working with Project.
Step 3. By default, Microsoft Project 2013, will select the General tab from the “Project Options” dialog.
Under Project view:
Select “Gantt with Timeline” from the “Default view:” drop-down combo. This view displays; list of Tasks, the relation of these tasks through the Gantt chart and the Timeline.
From the “Date format:” combo, select the date format you want to use for the Project. I have selected the “Month Date, Year” (January 28, 2009) format.
Step 4. From the “Project Options” dialog, select the “Display” tab. Microsoft Project 2013, displays the options to change how Project content is displayed.
Under Calendar:
We need to select a calendar for the Project. Select “Gregorian Calendar” from the “Calendar Type:” combo.
Under Currency options for this project:
When we deal with currency, we must represent the Currency data with a Symbol to easy to understand what Currency the Project is using. Select the Currency Symbol to display the currency in the “Symbol:” field. I have selected the “$” dollar symbol for this Project.
We need to consider, how many digits are to be displayed after the decimal point. Select it from the “Decimal digits:” field. It is good to keep 2 digits, after the decimal point. This is important to keep the decimal digits, to provide more accurate results when dealing with currency.
Select where the currency symbol is to be displayed; either before the number or after the number. For more readability, I have selected “$ 1”; a space between the currency symbol and the number.
Select Currency from the “Currency:” dropdown. I have selected “USD” for this Project.
Step 5. Select the “Schedule” tab from the “Project Options” dialog. This displays options, for scheduling and calculations. Also displayed options for calendars.
Under Calendar options for this project:
Select “Sunday” from the “Week starts on:” field.
Select Financial year from the “Fiscal year starts in:” field. I have selected October start as the new Financial Year (October – September) start.
Select default start time from the “Default start time:” field. Usual daily start time of the work.
Select default end time from the “Default end time:” field. Daily end time of the work.
Set hours per day in the “Hours per day:” field. Usually, it is 8 hours per day.
Set hours per week in the “Hours per week:” field. 40 hrs per week is the usual work hours per week.
Set days per month in the “Days per month:” field. Normally it is 20 working days per month.
Under Scheduling options for this project:
We can auto-schedule the new tasks we are going to create; by selecting the “Auto Scheduled” value from the “New tasks created:” field. This option will reduce our work, to set the dates for the Tasks; Auto schedule will do it for us. But on which date, the Task will start? We set it in the next option.
Select “Current Date” from the “Auto scheduled tasks scheduled on:” field. This tells Microsoft Project 2013, select the Current Date as the Task start date. The task end date will automatically update based on the Task duration.
In the “Duration is entered in:” field, select the “Days” value. This is depending on the Project. In our sample Project “Space-Debris-Robo”; we represent the duration in Days.
From the “Work is entered in:” field, select the “Days” value. This also depends on the Project type.
We should select “Fixed Duration” for the “Default task type:” field, for our Project. That means the Task needs to finish within the schedule.
Under Calculation:
We need to enable the feature to calculate the Project for each change; by enabling it (select “On“), from the “Calculate project after each edit:” field.
After the changes, click on the OK button from the “Project Options” dialog to Apply the changes to the Project.
We have completed an important step in Microsoft Project 2013; which is set-up the Project Options.
We will discuss more handling Projects through Microsoft Project 2013 in my upcoming Articles.
<< Marco