Setting up your tasks in Project-How to set up tasks in Microsoft Project-Tutorial for beginners

you so in this case I'm gonna go into Microsoft Project over here on my taskbar now from from the initial screen you can make a blank project which is what we're going to do or you have lots of other templates so you can try some of those templates it gives you a tremendous head start you can even be a great project with SharePoint project works very well with Outlook you can share the tasks and the resources with Outlook and we're SharePoint we're not going to talk about that too much today but it is possible so would it go and make a blank project so a project file contains all the tasks resources cost and everything about that one particular project alright so today let's say we make a project let's say you have a let's say you have a trade show that's coming up so we're going to you know talk about all the different tasks that might be involved with a trade show and show the different dependencies and these kind of things now the first screen that you're going to see is where you can actually list your tasks but you're going to see we're going to get to many other screens during today's presentation and I'll show you how to go back and forth now sometimes during the presentation I'll make my mouse do that so you can find a mess that way so what I usually like to do is I like to get my tasks down and then we'll talk about adding the the predecessors and what all that means and then by doing that it's going to help us actually build the Gantt chart so let's say you have this trade show coming up so one thing I would have to do is reserve the booth now when it talks about the duration you can put in a number here and then so let's say to reserve a boot that's going to take you know let's say an hour so I'll say 1 now you know if I type an H here it's going to mean an hour if I type in M it would mean a minute if I type in D it would be for a day a W would be for a week and M would be for a month so those are the different time frames minutes hours days weeks and months so let's say it's going to be one hour so let's say that's going to start on today so we'll pick today's date okay and then based on the duration it automatically calculates the finish date and then you can see how it puts that on what's going to be the Gantt chart over here so what I'll do is I'm going to type in my tasks and then we'll put in two different time frames and the dependencies so that we have to pay for that booth maybe that's going to be one hour so I'm actually going to put the the tasks and then I'll put the dates and times in and then the predecessors so this is the way I usually will do it I'll just list the list of tasks first so then we might lit a desire the booth display so you can see when I hit the enter key it just goes to the next row down so that's why I think it's just easier to get my get my tasks set as many as I can think of so you know at a trade show usually you have a contest of some kind so then I'll think about giveaway items maybe with your logo on there are these kind of things then we want to order once we design the booth display we would order the booth display for maybe from a sign company these kind of things you know obviously I'd have to design it before I order it so I can start to see that there would be a predecessor for that but we'll do that in just a second then I have to order the brochures and other other documents or their forms then order any kind of promotional items you know with our logo on there as the giveaways alright so then we have to start gathering all the materials alright so get your tasks and it's not easy now you can see I made a starting mistake there it's not a big deal you never you never set in stone of course you can go back and edit things pretty easily here so then we'll bring the materials over to the display arena then we have to set up the booth then what help do you have to do the tradeshow you know and then we'll have to break down break down the booth after the trade show is over and then we'll bring the materials back back to the office and then hopefully you got some leads so then we'll have to follow up with the leads so let's say these are the tasks for the the trade show now this project can have as many tasks as you need of course so what I'll do now is I'll put in the time that I think each of these tasks is going to go so we're in the planning stages of our project right so this is what you think it's going to take now we know in real life those numbers are hardly ever the right numbers but we can always put in the actuals once we get started with the project you know I'm just kind of planning everything so let's say designed that the booth will be eight hours thinking of a contest mate might take three hours think you have the giveaway item this might be another three hours all right so ordering it you know by the time you talk to the people and get everything right that might be three hours now here it's noticing that I'm doing something repetitively so I can actually highlight multiple tasks and then assign that all to the same timeframe so that's what that's telling me that I could actually you know highlight multiple tasks like that and then put them all in at the same time so that's the ordering brochures will be two hours or during that promotional items might take two hours by the time you know to talk to the person get the order right so gathering their materials might take a whole whole day so yeah I'm doing you know specifically setting a day that I bring it over the materials from our office maybe that's a three hour by the time we we load the van and take it over maybe you know what maybe we should say four hours they're setting up the booth itself is going to be another four hours let's say the trade show is two and a half days so I'll say two and a half days they're good breaking down the tray booth shouldn't be as long so maybe that's gonna be three hours bring the materials back will be another four hours and then follow up that might take a whole week to follow up with the leads and so on so we're getting our tasks and as you can say so now what I'll do is maybe give them some dates so let's say if I'm gonna reserve the booth on Monday I'll pay for it on Tuesday maybe the design will be on Wednesday no so you can see how it's taken the start date and what we type in and then the finish date will be with it whatever we you know whatever is based on the duration thinking of a contest so maybe that's on Thursday thinking of the giveaway items will be on Friday good so then next week we'll start to order what we need so maybe it will order the booth on Monday or how about next Tuesday put these in on Wednesday of next week good order that one on Thursday good all right so then we're going to gather all the materials I want to make sure you have everything by the 24th of February so we're going to start getting together because maybe the the trade show is going to be the first week of March so I want to make sure I have everything that I need at least a week ahead of time so let's say setup is gonna be that Monday the same day we delivered of course we're going to set that up and then the tradeshow itself is going to be on March the 3rd now we have to break it down by that Friday and then we'll bring the materials back when that's Friday good this has to be March of course good and then you can see how I can scroll down over here to the right to see more of the tasks and then we'll follow up we'll start following up the next week after the tradeshow all right so I'm putting in my tasks the durations the start time and then it calculates the finish time based on the the duration see how the finishes is one week as you can say now let's start to talk about our predecessors yeah so a really important thing is you know certain tasks depend on the completion of another task before they can get started so that's called predecessors well the first thing that we're going to do is reserve a booth then we have to pay for it well before I pay for it I have to reserve it right so I'm going to click on the pulldown and I'm going to say well you know number one is the pendency or a predecessor now one task could have more than one predecessor of course so that's good now before we design it we better make sure that we've paid for it that's all reserved so I'm going to say number two is important before we design the booth we'll make sure that we have a secure and that everything is all set I wouldn't even think of a contest before we paid for our booth so that's going to be a predecessor now notice what start starts to happen then we can see the we can see these different dependencies over here so that's going to be good so in this case now I can also adjust the dates over here which I you can see as I'm setting the predecessors it's changed in the dates so I'll go back and change the dates in just a second so in this case I can't think of a way the giveaway items before I pay for the booth so then once once we design it then we can order it right so this is going to be dependent on the fact that we've designed it so that'll be for design there like I said one task could have more than one predecessor so once I then designed a booth display I can also the order the the brochures and the promotional items so that design is kind of a big step right so gathering all the materials would have been dependent on the fact that we ordered everything right so I'm gonna click on this pull down that's going to be dependent that I ordered the booth display the very shores and the promotional items so notice how that one has the different dependencies now again I'm gonna go back and change the other dates so then now I would have had to gather the materials before I bring them over to the tradeshow right so gathering the materials is important before I bring them over I would imagine then I would have to bring over the materials before I can set up my booth then of course the tradeshow is dependent of the fact that I set up the booth so you can start to see the daisy chain here but when we make our date so though well it'll expand a little bit of course I would have had that had the tradeshow and we always set up the booth and the tradeshow is necessary for me to break it down bringing it back to materials is depend on the fact that I break down the booth and then follow up on the leads of course is dependent on the fact that I had the trade show and I brought the materials back so all those are dependencies for that one so as you can see it changed my dates that's okay we're just going to fix those again so this is the 21st now actually when I'm changing the dates it might change some of the the future one so she can say so the design was going to be on the 22nd this one will be Thursday and this is Friday good now this one was going to be next week so I'll change that to Monday Tuesday Wednesday okay so you can see things are pretty flexible here so we're going to make sure we gather everything let's say buy it will change to the seventeenth give us enough time this will be in March of course it'll be March 2nd this would be March 2nd and then the tradeshow itself is March 3rd I'm going to break it down on that Friday bring back the material on Friday and then we're going to follow up with the leads on the following week after the trade show is over good all right so looking good here now you can see how now the start dates are filled in the finished days two predecessors now I'll check out your Gantt chart it actually automatically builds the Gantt chart which shows two dependencies I'm going to go ahead and save this project that was a lot of work so the first time you save it you're going to give it a good name so I pick on save and then we'll give it a location usually it'll put it into the Documents folder but of course you can pick a different folder so I'll call it a trade show 2020 and then the file is going to have an MPP extension and then oh right now that'll be under the that'll be under the Documents folder now if I go to print death will click on file and then print then we can see the tasks and then on the next page then we can see the dependencies and we can see the Gantt chart as well alright so no problem with that you still see the full game chart so we're starting to get something going on with our project er down here it has the legend now of course you can get a pity set up like any other program and you can decide if you want something as far as what the marginal size is going to be what's going to be in the header and the footer so that that page setup is similar to Microsoft Excel what's different here is the legend so do I want to see this this is the ledge to do I want to see that on every page or just on one page or not at all and then we can talk about which view that we want as well all right so please setup pretty standard with all the other programs here I got it pasted up that way you