Microsoft Project 2000 provides many new and improved features that will help you schedule, track, and communicate your project information faster and more efficiently than ever.

Projects

Base a project on a template   Microsoft Project includes several detailed templates for different types of projects.

Clear the baseline or an interim plan on a project   Clearing previously saved baseline information for an entire project or selected tasks may be useful when the project is completed and you plan to use it as a template for another project.

Set the fiscal year in combination with calendar year dates for a project   By changing settings on both major and minor timescales, you can, for example, display fiscal year quarters over calendar months.

See one critical path in master projects   Microsoft Project can now calculate the latest finish date across all subprojects.

Automatically save a project file every few minutes   When using this option, you can save the active project or all open project files, set the interval at which you want the automatic saving to take effect, or choose to be prompted before project files are automatically saved.

Specify the default directory where you will save your project files   You can specify different directories for project files, user templates, and workgroup templates, or specify the default format when saving a project.

Tasks

Set priorities for tasks (or projects)   By assigning them a value between 1 and 1000, you can set the order in which tasks or projects should be completed.

Set a calendar for a task   Task calendars are especially useful for situations in which you want a task to be scheduled outside the normal working times defined by the project calendar or assigned resource calendars.

Set a deadline date for a task   Microsoft Project now alerts you when a task is scheduled to finish after its deadline.

Enter an estimated duration for a task   Displayed with a question mark, estimated durations are calculated the same way as actual durations but indicate that values are a best guess rather than a reliable estimate. Using the new Tasks With Estimated Durations filter, you can quickly find tasks with durations that may not be firm.

Use months as a unit of task duration   Typing 3mon in the duration field is recognized as three months.

Select a task by clicking its corresponding Gantt bar   This feature makes it easier to determine which task bar you have selected.

Resources

Contour the availability of resources   You can now model varying availability or resources for your projects. Resource availability contours are most useful in defining the available units over time for a resource group.

Incorporate material resources, such as supplies, stock, or other consumable items in your project   When assigning a material resource, such as steel, to a task, you can also specify the estimated consumption for the assignment, for example 10 tons of steel.

Views

Try out the new Network Diagram view   It replaces the PERT Chart view from previous versions of Microsoft Project. Use the new Network Diagram features to:

• Specify up to 16 fields per node.
• Choose from several new node shapes.
• Choose from a variety node formatting options (such as changing the row heights of the cells in the nodes, placing labels on cells, or changing fonts).
• Format individual nodes independently of their task types.
• Apply a filter to the Network Diagram, just as you can in any other view.
• Use outlining symbols to hide or display the subtasks of a summary task in much the same way you outline in the Gantt Chart view.

Display in views

Group tasks and resources   By grouping, you can classify different types of resources or tasks, specifying the criteria by which you want to group them. Grouping is useful to categorize and view rolled up information for a specific set of tasks or resources.

Display multiple Gantt bars on a single task line or for the project as a whole   By rolling up the Gantt bar to a summary task bar, you can quickly see an overview of the scheduled finish dates for selected subtasks.

Outline and numbering structure

Apply a custom work breakdown structure (WBS) numbering format   Additionally, you can create multiple outline structures in custom fields so that you can sort and group your tasks according to these outline structures.

Define custom outline codes   With custom outline codes, you can create a structure for your project that is different from WBS codes or outline numbers. Outline codes are completely user-defined and not tied to the outline structure of your project, so you can create more than one set of custom outline codes for tasks or resources. For example, you can create a custom outline structure based on your company cost or job codes and use it to filter, sort, and group tasks or resources by those codes.

Web-based communication

Use Microsoft Project Central to communicate project information to others   With Microsoft Project Central, Microsoft Project 2000 builds on the Web-based workgroup features that were available in Microsoft Project 98. Enhancements include personal Gantt Charts, filtering, sorting, grouping, task delegation, reports and a reporting capability, the ability to work offline, set message rules, and many other features.

User Interface functionality

Expand and collapse outline levels more efficiently   You can now directly select the outline level to which you would like to display your tasks.

Edit cells in place   Just like in Microsoft Excel, you can now simply click the cell you want to edit and make the necessary text changes.

Easily fill information up or down   By using the fill handles now included on the Gantt Chart view, it's easy to copy information to the cells above or below the information you want to repeat.

Set individual rows to differing row heights   You can simply drag the row line between tasks to the height that you want.

Access multiple Microsoft Project files on the Microsoft Windows® taskbar   And you can now easily switch between active files by pressing ALT+TAB.

Custom fields

Easily enter accurate data in custom fields   Microsoft Project now provides value lists and user-defined formulas to calculate custom data.

Use graphical indicators   Graphical indicators can be helpful to represent important data in a custom field. You can use graphical indicators for "stoplight" reporting, where they represent alerts when aspects of a project are not going as planned. For example, you can assign graphical indicators to display when values in a custom field extend past a predefined range or for any other user-defined criteria. They can also be displayed based on custom formula calculation results, value list selections, or just based on the value typed in.

Add project information to headers, footers or legends on views or reports   You can now incorporate project-level fields, such as % Complete or Actual cost fields when printing views or reports.

Hyperlinks

Use the same improved hyperlink functionality that you find in other Office 2000 products   You can now select a hyperlink from a list of previously viewed links and customize the hyperlink ScreenTip.

Online Help

Take advantage of the new HTML Help system   Help includes dynamic Help topics, an updated Project Map, and more reference information. The Project Map is available on the Help home page as well as the Help menu.

Get additional ToolTips   For example, if you point to the timescale, it now shows the date for a particular timescale unit. If you point to a cell where the column width is too narrow to completely display the full cell contents, the contents are shown in a ToolTip. And each column heading on sheet views has a ToolTip that provides access to in-depth information from the Fields reference.

Administration and programmability

Have the files you need automatically installed on your system   Just like the Office 2000 applications, Microsoft Project uses the Microsoft Windows Installer technology. Only the files you need are installed on your system. If a critical file is missing, the Installer reinstalls the missing piece.

Install a language pack   With it, your installed version of Microsoft Project can display its menus and dialog boxes in another language.

Save to the Microsoft Project 98 MPP file format   Using this format, you can easily exchange projects with users who have not upgraded to Microsoft Project 2000. When saving to this format, it is important to remember that Microsoft Project 98 does not include all the features found in Microsoft Project 2000, so some information may be lost when saving to this format. Microsoft Project 2000, however, will remind you of this by default when you save to the Project 98 file format.

Maintain system policies to control how Microsoft Project is used   Microsoft Project 2000 can read system policies and disable a feature based on the policy, and maintains an administrator's full control to customize a user's environment. For example, an administrator may apply a policy that sets the Office Assistant to the Office Logo because it has the least amount of animation and is the best choice for maximizing performance in a Windows Terminal Server environment. Microsoft Project 2000 maintains this policy, which allows an administrator to control users' environments.

Programmatically edit and apply new features   You can add features to your projects like grouping, custom WBS, and custom outlines codes that have new methods associated with them.

Work faster and more efficiently with Microsoft Project data in databases   The Microsoft Project 2000 database schema has been improved considerably from Microsoft Project 98 to increase performance and make it easier and more intuitive to work with Microsoft Project data in a database.

Easily integrate project data   Microsoft Project 2000 is an OLE-DB provider. With OLE-DB, a specification for a set of data access interfaces that enables a multitude of data stores in an enterprise to work seamlessly together, it is possible for other applications to easily access Microsoft Project's data as well as its scheduling capabilities, making it much easier to integrate project data in the enterprise.