Create a Project from a Template

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About this lesson

Create a brand new project based off of an existing template.

Quick reference

Create a Project from a Template

Create a new project plan based on an in-built project template. 

When to use

We use templates when we want to speed up the process of creating a new plan in Project. 

Instructions

What are Templates and why are they useful?

Templates are amazing if we want to have somewhere to start. It can be a bit intimidating to be faced with a completely blank project plan so instead, we can choose an in-built template.

Templates in Project contain pre-defined tasks, buckets, and other elements which we can modify to suit our data. They give us a jump start and generally make the process of creating a new project more efficient. 

Create a Project from a Template

  • From Project Home, click New project. 

In the Start with a template section, we have several templates we can choose from. Each template is related to a different type of project. If we just want a basic template, we can choose Simple Project. 

  • Select a template.

We can see some information about the template and its key benefits. We also get a preview of what the template looks like. 

  • Click Use template. 

The template will load into Project for the Web. Templates contain tasks that we can modify, summary sections, estimated durations, pre-set buckets, and labels. This means we don't have to add these elements, we can simply modify them to suit our needs.

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  • 00:03 So now we've seen how we can import an existing project into your Project for
  • 00:09 the web.
  • 00:09 Let's start to take a look at how we can create our own projects.
  • 00:13 And in this lesson,
  • 00:14 we're going to take a look at how we can create a project based off of a template.
  • 00:18 And templates are amazing if you want to have something to start with.
  • 00:22 It can be a little bit intimidating to be faced with just a completely blank
  • 00:26 project, which you have to build from scratch.
  • 00:29 Sometimes it's much nicer to be able to start out with a basic structure and
  • 00:33 modify that structure.
  • 00:35 And that is where templates come in really useful.
  • 00:39 If you want to create a project from a template,
  • 00:41 all we need to do is click on the New project button at the top.
  • 00:45 And you can see we have a Start with template section,
  • 00:47 where we have a few different templates that we can choose from.
  • 00:50 So we have a template for a very simple project.
  • 00:55 So if you do have a very basic project with just a few tasks, maybe,
  • 00:57 this could be a good template to start with.
  • 00:59 We have one that's related to project management, we have a template for
  • 01:03 commercial construction.
  • 01:05 If you've got a marketing project that you're creating,
  • 01:07 this could be a good template.
  • 01:09 We have one for Software Development,
  • 01:13 we have Business Plans, and Employee Onboarding.
  • 01:18 So you can select any of these templates, so let's choose Employee Onboarding,
  • 01:20 let's click to open it up.
  • 01:20 Now, at the top here, it says,
  • 01:22 these step-by-step tasks can help organize your employee onboarding process.
  • 01:27 So this particular template is great if you work in, maybe, HR and
  • 01:31 you have to onboard employees frequently.
  • 01:33 This template is going to help us manage the onboarding process and documentation.
  • 01:38 It includes steps for IT and HR onboarding tasks,
  • 01:42 and it allows us to organize communicating with our new employee
  • 01:47 from post offer acceptance to asking them for feedback.
  • 01:51 So this template includes quite a bit of stuff that might be useful to us.
  • 01:56 And we get a little preview here as to what this template looks like.
  • 01:59 So I'm going to click on Use template at the bottom to load
  • 02:02 this template up into Project for the web.
  • 02:05 So let's take a quick look at what we have in this template.
  • 02:08 You can see that a number of tasks have already been added for us, and
  • 02:13 we've got summary sections created as well.
  • 02:16 There are rough durations that have been entered for these particular tasks and
  • 02:20 also rough start dates as well.
  • 02:22 And it even has included with it labels so we can see which
  • 02:26 tasks are specifically related to HR and which tasks are related to IT?
  • 02:30 You can also see we have a couple of tasks down here that are labeled as Manager.
  • 02:35 And some of these tasks also have checklist items.
  • 02:39 If you take a look in the Quick look column, if you see a little icon like
  • 02:43 this, it means that there are checklist items for this task.
  • 02:47 So if we open up this task, and to open up any task,
  • 02:50 you just need to click on the i to open the details.
  • 02:53 In the pane on the right hand side, this is where I can see all of the information
  • 02:57 that I currently have for this particular task.
  • 03:00 I can see it is labeled as IT, so it's an IT task.
  • 03:04 Start and finish dates, the duration for
  • 03:07 this task is been assigned to a specific bucket.
  • 03:09 So again, along with this template, it's created a whole bunch of buckets so
  • 03:14 we can organize and group our tasks.
  • 03:17 The priority is set to Medium, and if we scroll down and
  • 03:20 click the arrow next to Checklist, this is where we can find our checklist items.
  • 03:25 So this main task has these two checklist items,
  • 03:29 they're mini tasks of the main task.
  • 03:31 So we can see that indicated in this Quick look column.
  • 03:35 Now, of course, when you're using a template like this, the case is probably
  • 03:39 going to be that the tasks that we have in here in the template are not exactly what
  • 03:44 you want them to be when you relate this template to your actual project.
  • 03:48 So of course, we're probably going to need to go in and make some modifications.
  • 03:52 Again, we can simply open up the details, and
  • 03:55 we can do things like change the task title at the top, just here.
  • 03:59 We can assign this task to other people.
  • 04:01 We don't necessarily have to have this task assigned to HR,
  • 04:04 we can add our own labels.
  • 04:06 And of course, we can modify the Start,
  • 04:09 the Finish day, the Durations, so on and so forth.
  • 04:12 So really, what these templates do are just give us a starting point so
  • 04:16 we're not just faced with a blank schedule that we need to complete.
  • 04:20 So templates can be super useful.
  • 04:21 They're also really helpful if you want to practice working with a project in
  • 04:26 Project for the web.

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