Microsoft Project 2010 Reports
I can remember back in the 1980s and 1990s, the IT industry was promising ‘the paperless office’. A superbly wishful piece thinking and marketing, but it overlooks the fact that us humans, have spent our lives obtaining information from sheets of paper or books.
With this in mind, Microsoft project 2010 allows you to print off various reports. Speaking personally, having to scan a computer screen for information rather than read and annotate a piece of paper is not the best way to use and communicate information.
The five categories of Microsoft Project 2010 Reports:
- Overview
- Current
- Costs
- Assignments
- Workload
Each of the above categories also contains several pre-designed reports, which I will not cover in detail here, however you cannot edit several categories of each standard report. The reports are resourced, task, or Crosstab. The Crosstab report style is laid out as a matrix with different data within each column and row. For example it may show and individuals cost per task against a time line showing when costs are planned per week and per task as an example.
Microsoft project 2010 also contains visual reports which utilizes the of the tables within Excel or Visio, and these come in six categories:
- Task usage
- Resource usage
- Assignment usage
- TasksSummary
- Resource summary
- Assignment summary
To select the standard reports choose the project, and the reports command. The dialog box will show the six categories which you can either double click on each item or press the select button.
To print each report out click of the prince button above the print options and select your printing preferences from the left-hand side of the screen.
I will explain in more detail just one of the report categories and that is the four assignment reports:
Who does what report
This gives you a list of the project tasks but it is organized by resource showing total work hours, the number of days delay from the original schedule, and the start and finish dates. Usually, it also shows the total number of work hours for each individual resource for all of their assigned tasks within the project.
Who does what when report
This simply shows the calendar view that lists all of the tasks organised by a time period along with the total hours for each resource assignment.
To do list report
This particular report is for a single named resource all of a week by week basis within the project. It lists the task names, their durations, start and finish dates, and any predecessor tasks by referencing their task number.
Over-allocated resources reports
This report has the over-allocated filter applied to it and therefore shows resource assignments for those human resources who are over-allocated or overbooked on tasks within the project. If includes the total hours, unit assignments, total hours of work per task, and any delay from the regional schedule.
As described above, simply choose the project and within the ribbon, and select reports.
Click Assignments and then select to choose one of the four reports. As before you can modifying aspects such as page setup be for printing the report out the report view shows what the report will look like before you actually print it out.
If you wish to modify or edit a standard report, then as before select the project tab and then reports, but then click the custom button and, click on a specific report, and then click copy.
You will be presented with the reports dialog box containing several tabs which are self explanatory to edit.
My best advice, is to save a project file under a temporary name and play around with the various reports to get a feel of which would be most helpful to you and the most sensible layout options.
For the full story go to [thrive_link color=’orange’ link=’https://www.projex.com/courses/microsoft-project/’ target=’_self’ size=’medium’ align=’aligncenter’]Microsoft Project Masterclass[/thrive_link]
