Create Custom Views and Tables

Quick reference

• 00:04 Once you get started using Microsoft Project,
• 00:07 you're going to find that the views that come with the product aren't
• 00:11 necessarily set up the way you want.
• 00:15 For example, I'm looking at a view right now that's listing the fixed cost accrual.
• 00:19 I don't need that for my project so I wanna remove that.
• 00:24 But I can also create my own view.
• 00:27 Now the way we do that is to first create a table, and
• 00:31 that defines the columns that we're going to display.
• 00:34 Then we can create the view.
• 00:36 i'm going to show you how to do that in this lesson.
• 00:40 After holding a team status meeting, the home owner asked you, as the project
• 00:45 manager, to build a view that clearly shows the current status of the project.
• 00:51 You're going to create a view and a table.
• 00:55 Right now you're in the get chart view.
• 00:58 And you can see I'm in the view tab in project, looking at the get chart.
• 01:04 But if I come over here to the data section, I'm looking at the cost table.
• 01:08 And, the cost table is defining all of these columns.
• 01:12 So, I need to create a simplified table for the homeowner.
• 01:18 The first thing I'll do is click tables, more tables.
• 01:24 Make sure it's a task based table, and click the New button.
• 01:30 We're going to call this table homeowners table.
• 01:37 Now in the field name, we're going to type ID.
• 01:41 Now ID is this number here on the left of the screen.
• 01:45 The reason for why there isn't a title that says ID
• 01:49 is because this is a particular column that's locked in place.
• 01:54 And you can see it says lock first column.
• 01:56 We want that.
• 01:57 So no matter how much you scroll horizontally,
• 02:00 you'll always see this ID number.
• 02:03 So that's our first one.
• 02:05 We also want the indicators column.
• 02:07 If you'll recall there is an indicators column in some of our views that actually
• 02:12 show the red person that's showing over allocation the notes icon.
• 02:18 That show our notes for
• 02:19 the different types of predecessors successors that we created.
• 02:24 We want the task name.
• 02:26 And oddly enough, you don't type task name.
• 02:29 Notice there's no field for that.
• 02:30 You type name, N-A-M-E.
• 02:33 So, if you're creating a task level view, it's going to be name and
• 02:38 that's a task name.
• 02:39 If you create a resource level view, you type name and that's the resource name.
• 02:44 So a little bit odd there, but name means task name.
• 02:50 Now of course we want to be able to see the duration for our project.
• 02:56 And we also want to see the start and the finish.
• 03:03 The homeowner isn't too interested in who's doing the work,
• 03:06 because it will be pretty clear based on where we're at.
• 03:09 So the homeowner doesn't want that field.
• 03:12 Now, when you click the table menu, notice how we got to this More Tables.
• 03:18 Well, we want to be able to see it from the pick list.
• 03:22 So we choose Show In Menu.
• 03:25 And click the OK button.
• 03:29 Do not click Apply, instead click the Close button.
• 03:32 We're pressing the Close button because we don't want to just apply these
• 03:37 changes to this gantt chart view, we want to create our own view.
• 03:43 So click the close button.
• 03:45 Now we're going to create a view that uses the table that we created.
• 03:50 Make sure you click on the View tab.
• 03:53 Choose Other Views.
• 03:56 Choose More Views.
• 03:59 Click New.
• 04:01 Choose single view and
• 04:06 type Home Owner View.
• 04:11 The home owner wants a Gantt chart style view.
• 04:13 So we'll go ahead and leave that.
• 04:15 The table we'll use is the homeowners table.
• 04:19 The group we'll use is no group.
• 04:22 We're not going to group the tasks together in any special way.
• 04:26 And then the filter is going to be all tasks.
• 04:30 Now, if the home owner only wanted to see incomplete tasks or
• 04:34 late milestones, you could choose a filter.
• 04:38 But right now we're just going to choose All tasks.
• 04:41 And we'll choose Highlight Filter.
• 04:43 That means these little tick marks,
• 04:46 these little drop down arrows that appear next to each column can be filtered.
• 04:50 Se, we'll go ahead and choose Highlight Filter and click OK.
• 04:56 Now, we can click Apply to apply the home owner view.
• 05:01 As you can see, the home owner view does not look all that good right now.
• 05:06 So we could actually go into the table, modify the column, width,
• 05:11 and change all of the settings there.
• 05:13 But right now, any new changes we make,
• 05:15 will automatically affect the table that we created.
• 05:18 So now we can go ahead and move fields around, get them to look the way we want.
• 05:27 Now one thing that the homeowner did ask for is percent complete.
• 05:31 So we'll put that right to the left, to the left of the duration column.
• 05:35 So insert that and type percent complete.
• 05:40 Now, the homeowner also said
• 05:43 that they're not interested in just seeing all these numbers.
• 05:47 They want some sort of an indicator.
• 05:50 That tells them how well the project is progressing
• 05:53 against the timeline and the budget.
• 05:55 I'm going to show you how to do that in the next lesson.

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