The Office Project 2007 family includes Office Project Standard 2007, Office Project Professional 2007, Microsoft Office Project Server 2007, Microsoft Office Project Web Access (a Client Access License for Office Project Server 2007), Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007, and Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Web Access (a Client Access License for Project Portfolio Server).

Office Project 2007 has two types of offerings designed for different needs:

• Office Project Standard 2007 is a desktop program for individual users who manage projects independently.
• The Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution combines Office Project Server 2007, Office Project Professional 2007, Office Project Web Access, Office Project Portfolio Server 2007, and Office Project Portfolio Web Access to form a business solution for organizations, departments, and teams.

Office Project 2007 meets different user needs depending on the specific solution:

• Office Project Standard 2007 is for individual users who manage projects independently.
• The Office EPM Solution addresses the needs for collaborative project and portfolio management in an organization.
  
  
  • Executives who allocate funds and oversee projects, programs, and portfolios by providing visibility, decision-making tools, and control.
  • Project managers and staff who create and manage projects.
  • Resource managers who work with staff and assets, by providing rich, Web-based tools for tracking and planning.
  • Team members who work on projects, by providing access in familiar tools to view work and report status.
  • Administrators and IT staff who manage and extend the solution, by realizing decreased license acquisition costs, a flexible platform, and enterprise functionality.

Desktop (Office Project Standard 2007 and/or Office Project Professional 2007)

• Produces great reports.
• Permits greater financial control and helps understand project schedules.
• Delivers immediate value with improved ease of use.

Office Project 2007 is used for a variety of functions and applications in a wide range of industries, which include:

• IT Governance.
• Product development.
• Quality management with Six Sigma.
• Professional Services Automation.
• Project, resource, and risk management.
• Industries such as construction, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, government, retail, financial services, healthcare, and more.

Yes. In addition to all the languages supported by Microsoft Office Project 2003, Office Project 2007 adds full support for Arabic and Hebrew. In addition to the client being Unicode enabled, Office Project 2007 supports Unicode for desktop client-to-server communications and delivers full Multilingual User Interface (MUI) compliance.

Yes, the Office Project 2007 clients (Project Web Access, Professional, and Standard) support MUI.

Yes. Office Project 2007 has enhanced non-project time tracking.

The prices for Office Project Standard 2007 and Office Project Professional 2007 will remain the same as the 2003 versions. For details on the other products, please refer to the pricing and licensing information on the 2007 Microsoft Office system pricing page.

The licensing model will remain the same for details, see the 2007 Microsoft Office system pricing page or the How to buy Project page.

Yes. You can download a free trial of Office Project 2007 or try it in your Web browser through the online test drive.

If you purchased Software Assurance on Project 2003, you will receive similar future versions of Project for the lifetime of your Software Assurance agreement. The specific software packaging options for the next release of the Microsoft Office system have not been determined at this time.

Yes, though details remain to be determined. The technology guarantee will give automatic upgrade rights to users who acquire software within a set time period (to be determined) prior to launch.

The new Office Project 2007 features include:

• Background Cell Highlighting
• Change Highlighting
• Cost Resources
• Desktop Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) Cube
• Multiple Level Undo
• Task Drivers pane
• Budget Tracking
• Visual Reports

Using this function, you can change the background color of cells in the table portion of the view.

When you change a project, all affected tasks can be automatically highlighted (for example, dependencies and summary task). The highlights reflect only the most recent change.

Yes, Cost Resources is the resource type for fixed costs assignable to a task. It more accurately monitors project financials by assigning multiple costs to a task, tying costs to account codes, and rolling up costs against budgets. Additionally, the costs are not tied to the work contours, so changing the percent complete or end date of the task will not affect Cost Resources. Having more predefined cost-related fields permits easier mapping to project accounting systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning modules.

Users can create customer reports or archive Office Project Standard 2007 or Office Project Professional 2007 values with data exported from Office Project 2007 into a Microsoft Office Access 2007 database and OLAP cubes. Five cubes are generated: Task Time Phased, Task Non-Time Phased, Resource Time Phased, Resource Non-Time Phased, and Assignment Time Phased.

You can reverse your most recent series of changes (that is, undo and redo changes) to views, data, and options. This functionality also enables undo actions or sets of actions from macros or compliant third-party extensions.

Yes. But you cannot undo the save itself.

This pane appears to the left of the table portion of the view. It shows prerequisite tasks and resource constraints that drive the start data of the selected task. You can click these drivers to link to relevant information.

This means a manager can define a budget at a high level (program or project) so the project manager can allocate funds and track costs against the budget.

This feature uses Microsoft Office Excel 2003 or higher and Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Professional to produce charts, graphs, and diagrams based on Office Project 2007 data. Define custom report templates to share with other Office Project 2007 users and preview these templates from a dialog box in Office Project 2007.

Office Project Standard 2007 is the latest version of the desktop project management program. As a stand-alone product, Office Project Standard 2007 helps project managers, business managers, and planners to manage and plan projects independently with familiar, easy-to-use tools. Office Project Standard 2007 is not designed to exchange data with Office Project Server 2007.

Office Project Professional 2007 is the desktop client that is also used to connect with Office Project Server 2007 as part of the Office EPM Solution. Office Project Professional 2007 offers all the tools found in Office Project Standard 2007, and when used with Office Project Server 2007, it also provides powerful EPM capabilities such as collaboration, management of shared resources, portfolio management, and reporting across projects and programs run by different project managers.

The plan of record is to try to support the same system requirements for each edition of Project. The plan of record is for Office Project Standard 2007 hardware requirements to remain the same. View the Project system requirements.

The plan of record is for Office Project Standard 2007 hardware requirements to remain the same.

The clients and server for Office Project 2007 are built on top of, and use, the Windows platform and will continue to do so for Windows Vista. Microsoft expects to continue enriching Windows infrastructure investments, like XML, ASP.NET, and Web Parts. Customers and developers can develop and deploy Office Project 2007 today, knowing that those investments will be carried forward with additional customer value when Windows Vista comes to market.

Customers have given us feedback on the many project management and compliance standards they are required to address today, and in the future. This is more than a technology issue; it is the processes and controls of the organization that need to be certified as compliant. Office Project 2007 offers infrastructure to support this compliance.

No, they remain unchanged. Office Project 2007 adds substantial new capabilities in addition to these legacy reports, with Visual Reports on the desktop.

Yes. Visual Reports will support the 2003, 2002, and 2000 versions of Excel and Office Visio Professional 2007.

Yes. A set of changes support project finances: predefined project accounting fields, a budget field, and the new cost resource type.

Yes, it is called Cost Resources. It helps you more accurately monitors Project financials by assigning multiple costs to a task, tying costs to account codes, and rolling up costs against budgets. Additionally, the costs are not tied to the work contours, so changing the percent complete or end date of the task will not affect Cost Resources.

Material resources are expected to tie directly to the work contour. Cost Resources should be independent from the work contour and don't accrue in the same fashion as material resources.

Yes. Timesheets support billable/non-billable and fiscal period.

No. Cost Resources are not thought of as something that accrues at a rate, but rather as straightforward costs.

After launch, the Project Resource Kit will include guides on configuration, security, administration, and more.

The Microsoft Office Developer Center for Project includes summaries and links to information about planning, developing, and deploying solutions based on Project.

Microsoft has a large and diverse community of experienced solution providers that will be ready to help you after the Project conference. Locate a Project solution provider.

For information, visit the Microsoft Office Project Solution Providers Web site.

Downloads on Microsoft Office Online is your one-stop resource for Project software updates, downloads, add-ins, templates, service releases, online services, and more.

See previous versions for product information, downloads, and support options.